lydamorehouse | Entries tagged with conventions

Yesterday was our second rehearsal for the Cole Sarar SciFi Reading Hour. I'm glad we added a another session because I failed to do my homework this last time. Plus, I found it deeply distracting to try to read while Scott played--especially since he was electrified and we weren't. I read my absolute WORST. So, I guess it's good to have gotten that over with? Hopefully, things will only improve from here.

Some funny observations:

Our rehersals keep getting longer because Scott and I can't stop talking. Now that Cole is comfortable with us both, they are also joining in, but, inevitably someone has to say, "We should probably get to work or we'll never get out of here."

The number of people that Scott and I have in common is starting to reach into strange and unusual places. I'm now starting to wonder how it is even possible that I have never previously talked to him before now. Like, seriously, he's very close friends with someone I regularly play D&D with. (

lcohen , it's Carrilon.) The mystery is no longer "Oh, you know THEM?" but "Are you sure we've never been at a party together at some point???"

We spent a long time talking about what Cole likes about Convergence because I have been feeling kind of grumpy about that con ever since it moved to the hotel in downtown Minneapolis. Talking about it makes me feel like a fuddy-duddy, too, and I like that even less. Like, when Cole asked me why I'm not fond of Convergence, I started muttering about crowds and finding it hard to find the people I want to hang out with, and finally "eh, it's always felt like a party con." And, like, some of that is unfair. But, neither Cole nor Scott knew if there were any actual booksellers in the dealer's room--not, I had to clarify, "People sitting at tables with the books they've published" or people like Queen of Swords Press or Tor Books who are selling books, but only from their own publishing house. I mean, like people who are selling books who might potentially bring, say, Naomi's books or one of the Guest of Honor's books... or, you know, if it's Dreamhaven or Uncles, one of my books. They didn't think so, but the fact that that it never occured to them that one of the reasons authors go to conventions is to, you know, sell books, but don't actually necessarily want to have to sit behind a table hand selling their own books.... kind of tells me a lot. Like, I don't expect booksellers to be a con as small as Gaylaxicon (though Dreamhaven did have a spot in our dealer's room thanks to Greg being one of the GoHs.) because it's small. But, Convegence is massive. They should be attractive to a lot of booksellers. And yet... I don't think they are. And I think that's because it's still largely true that people don't go to Convergence to buy books.

The bookseller at Capclave was hopping. So, I don't think it's that booksellers can never make money at conventions. Greg and Lisa are forever travelling to conventions around the country, so it must be worthwile to them at least on some level or you'd think you'd have to eventually not go due to travel costs being higher than profit.

Anyway, this led us to the Great Schism of Minicon and only Cole and I were old enough to remember experiencing it in real time. Cole's first ever convention was Convergence.

I don't know where I was going with this.

Anyway, it was a fun time. Part of what I hope to do today is spend a little time cleaning up some of the prose in my story. I wrote it very fast for an anthology and I'm kind of surprised my writers' group didn't catch some of my repetitive language, etc. But, some of that is less obvious when you read it, than when you read it OUT LOUD. Several times!

I think I need more coffee to be more articulate. Feel free, local and other Convergence attending folks, to drop me a comment about what you love (or don't) about Convergence lately.

As the person who did much of the programming planning, I knew that Saturday was our action-packed day. This was intentional. If people buy day passes, it's usually for Saturday only. I wanted it to be worth it for those folks.

Having ended my night around 11:00 pm, I had a 10:00 am panel the next morning. Last weekend was also the Twin Cities Marathon. It used to be that the marathon only screwed up traffic on Sunday, but now there are a bunch of other half-marathons and such like on Saturday as well. So, I got up extra early in order to drive around all of that and still pick up coffee for myself on the way into the con. I normally am somewhat unhappy to live as close as I do to a highway, but I was grateful for it both Saturday and Sunday because I could just swing around into downtown really easily.

Was this the morning that I spotted Kyell Gold (https://www.kyellgold.com/news.html) headed off to coffee before the convention started? I think it had to be because Friday nothing started until after noon. Yeah, this makes sense because I had budgeted so much extra time to get around the marathon that I actually ended up at the hotel far earlier than I intended. I saw him leaving the hotel and, of course, tried to shout his name from the car. But that rarely works. So, before trying to text him, I parked--in by the way, the scariest most under construction parking ramp that I've been in, in a long while. Like, it is never a safe feeling to be driving under temporary load-bearing scaffolding. Anyway, Kyell was up for some company and so I agreed to meet him at Backstory Coffee. The coffee shop was about a block and a half from the hotel and--for future ConFABulous reference--is EXTREMELY queer friendly. The signs on their door remind patrons not to use gendered language when speaking to the staff!! Love this! Also, the coffeeshop had cheap, hot breakfast options. I got myself a bean burrito wrap which, while messy to eat, was extremely good (and way cheaper than anything at the hotel restaurant.)

Kyell and I hung out together and chatted on their outdoor patio, something we could only do this year because who would have expected 80-90+ degrees in October?

Kyell and I walked back to the hotel together and I must have stopped in at the hotel restaurant (I think when Anton waved at me or because I saw Eleanor Arnason or both) because that's when I first discovered that KD Edwards had recruited so many of his own fans to show up for the convention.

My first panel was fantastic. It was one where I'd smooshed together two ideas that were similar. "Writing Queer/Different Stories in Times Like These: Hope A Little Bit Every Day." I mean, it's 2025, y'all. I don't know if you've looked outside, but it's rough out there, especially for trans folks. So the panel basically tackled how we continue to hope, despite what's going on. Dax, our moderator, asked us in our introduction to note where on the hope scale we were, with ten being the most hope. I was the only one who confessed to be hardcore hanging out around 2 most days. I'm not without ANY hope, but this presidential election, for me, felt like an extinction level event. I don't talk about that much because it brings down the room and the human mind needs more hope than I feel on a daily basis. But this panel was about how we go on despite a lack of hope and there were some real solutions that weren't just "go get involved" from the panelists. One of the more fascinating connections that got made was by Kelly Barnhill (and supported by naomikritzer ) which is that anger is just as important a tool as hope. Naomi referenced a recent Locus Award ceremony speech on the same idea: https://stone-soup.ghost.io/hammer-speech/

When I came out of the panel, there was a line for registration. Eventbrite clocked our total paid tickets as just over 200, but I believe that does not include all of our attending professionals (20+), performers (Ms. Shannan Paul, +3), a whole slew of community tables, a few other random badges that were comped for reasons of ad swaps, etc., and five guests of honor. With all those added back in our badge numbers were close to 260, which should probably still be adjusted downward a bit, due to some duplications, but IS STILL F*CKING AMAZING.

The largest Gaylaxicon has been according to its wikipedia page is 350 (in 1994 in Rockville, MD.) So, I feel pretty good about even just the raw number of 200.

Anyway, at this point I stood around chatting with passing people in the halls and ended up being gangpressed on a lunch outing. If I have any complaint about Gaylaxicon, it would be about the hotel. I love the location and set-up of this particular hotel, I always have. It's been the site of many of my fondest memories, including getting to know jiawen for the first time during, IIRC, a Marscon. But, since becoming an Aire apartment complex as well as a hotel, something has changed. For one, there was a weird amount of fruit flies--that might have been due to the heat, but I had to wonder if it had to do with the fact that more people were LIVING at the hotel and thus creating more garbage and other opportunities for fruit flies. Eleanor told me on Sunday that when she called Patrick to tell him how things were going at the con, she started with "Calling from fruit fly central." I mean, they're harmless? But it was noticeable. Second, as happens at a lot of cons (always to my bafflement), the hotel seemed wholly unprepared for people to want to use their on site restaurant. I think due to its proximity to both the airport and the Mall of America, the Crowne Plaza's management just presumed that people would eat elsewhere and that's probably even true for other mundane conventions. Fans like to stick close to home. I think there's a number of reasons for this, but the most obvious one is that there's fantastic programming and games and dealer's rooms to get back to! So, you just want to be able to grab a quick bite and get back to the con.

So, the lunch outing became a sort of comedy of WHY ARE CON HOTELS LIKE THIS? Someone had checked in with the front desk to see what was good within walking distance and we were directed to a Mexican restaurant in the office building across the parking lot. Fantastic, cheap and close. It was a little weird to get to as it turned out to be in the basement and, for reasons of weekend, I guess, the front doors which faced the hotel were locked. But we figure it out and... lo, and behold, the Mexican restaurant has a handwritten sign on it that says "Sorry, closed October 3-5"--like, literally the exact days of the convention. Okay, fine. Let's just go back to the Crowne Plaza. We arrived in time to find that they're closing--the hotel restaurant was only open until 1 pm. After that they didn't open again until dinner time. Naomi's blood sugar is dropping precipitously at this point and everyone has a panel at 2:30 pm. So people are arguing things like should we doordash? What do we do? What can arrive in time? Someone has found a pizza place nearby, but they're not answering the phone. Someone--Dax, maybe?--notes there is another hotel, a Hilton just across the street. We all march over there expecting a disaster (or high prices) but, other than aggressive misgendering from the waiter, we finally manage to eat. Luckily Emma has worked in food service before and cleverly told the server to bring our bills out before we even started eating. That way people could leave as a soon as food was consumed.

Everyone finally relaxed and we had this tremendous conversation about life, the universe, and everything.

Then, just as people were starting to talk about what else they had on for the day, haddayr discovered that she's actually supposed to have been moderating a panel that started at 1:00 pm. It's now 2:00. There were panicked tears. I felt bad, too, because I automatically said "don't cry" and, you know what? You can always cry. What is so weird about that impulse is that my son, who is 22, literally never heard me say "don't cry" in his entire life because I never wanted him to feel like emotions were unwelcome. I don't know what came over me, honestly--I think, and I told Haddayr this later, that what I meant to say was "if what you're feeling is shame for having failed a responsibility to the convention, then please don't. The convention will survive beyond what is, ultimately, a small mistake." But, of course, what she was really feeling was responsibility to her idol Eleanor Arnason, because the panel she missed was "Honoring Eleanor."

So that sucked, but we all hurried back to the hotel and I left Haddayr in deep apology to Eleanor.

Next up for me was "Murderbot: Sec Units and Gender and Sexuality" and that started on topic but ended up being all about the Murderbot Diaries generally. I was the moderator so the off-topicness was entirely my fault, but the room was standing-room only and people just really wanted to squee (or, in some cases, complain or further examine some of the differences between the Apple TV series and the novellas/novels.) That was super high energy and, what was fun (? though somewhat annoying for the audience) is that we could hear the chatter in the hallway, which gave the impression (accurate or not) of a lively, busy con.

I didn't go right away to the Chocolate Symposium, but I did head up there eventually.

My next big thing was running my Thirsty Sword Lesbians cyberpunk one shot which started at 4:00 and ran until 7:00 pm (with a half hour dinner break, as the con had a free buffet dinner in the banquet hall room.) I was overbooked with 8 players, but one of them couldn't make it, so we had a full table. That was a lot of fun, actually. I was a little worried that we'd be too loud in the shared game room, but I tucked us into the far corner so I think it was fine. I was smart and figured out how to pause the action before the dinner break with a cliffhanger (so people would come back!) Once again, even with only 2 and a half hours, I was able to come to a decently satisfying conclusion by the end. We only ran overtime by about fifteen minutes. My players were fantastic. Once again, however, the plot I thought we'd follow wasn't what the players latched on to--but as I've said a million times now, that's the game and the fun for the GM. Especially a system like TSL. It's 99.9% improv.

But, with an RPG to run, I missed out on seeing a lot of the really cool programming, but so I was able to stick my head in and watch a bit of Jim Johnson's presentation on Star Trek: Adventures and the end of Nghi Vo's North Country Gaylaxians reader discussion group.

So then came the comedy show at 8:30 pm...

As previously discussed, this was apparently past bedtime for a lot of our con go-ers. I wouldn't say that the mainstage room was empty, but neither was it packed. I felt really badly for the performers. We were a seriously TOUGH crowd. First, Miss Shannon wanted us to log into some site to answer some silly multiple choice questions and that took WAY TOO long. For a bunch of nerds, we all struggled much more than we should have. I, in fact, missed getting into the site in time to answer the survey, but, like it wasn't even all that funny of a bit and Miss Shannan clearly decided to just drop it after that, because I never got another chance to participate.

And, then...

There were several times in the first set where the performer was like, "Whelp, that died," like OUT LOUD. I wanted to say, "You don't know that for sure, we're just really bad at this!" but, I think that there were a couple of problems with this comedy show in general. First of all, unlike most cons by this hour, no one was drunk. This is the most sober convention I've ever been to in my life. I personally love it, as I don't drink, but there is not a lot of, shall we say, social lubrication going on. Secondly, the audience--probably for the first time for a lot of these performers-- was 100% queer. So, the "look how funny queer people are" jokes all fell a little flat because, "yeah, we know." There was one moment where the final performer made a joke involving, shall we say, the lady nether lips and it landed to a silent room. She said, "That usually kills in Edina," and I told her afterwards that, yeah, no, it was funny, it's just that your audience is actually sitting there quietly trying to decide if we'd be into that particular kink. People in Edina never think about labial folds. The whole idea that they exist is kind of shocking.

Third, sometimes humor works because we've all bought into what's supposedly "normal" behavior and so many fans, neurodivergent folks, and queers have already rejected that. Like, we know we're weird. So when people say "LOOK, THIS BEHAVIOR IS SO STRANGE! ISN'T IT FUNNY???" we're, like, yeah, I do that, so...? A surprising amount of comedy depends on people being willing to find weird people weird, you know? And that can be fine if it's done with love and respect and these performers mostly treaded that line, but I do think that a lot of their jokes ended with so much silence because fandom is a special place where weird is wonderful.

Also, sensing the low energy in the room, the final performer tried to get everyone to sing-along, which, again, should work for a queer audience (musicals! ex-theater kids! whoo!) was also really excruciating because a good 75% of us are introverts who really barely wanted to be at the show to begin with because it might be crowded and there might be audience participation just like this.

On the positive side, the middle performer lit up the room. First, she's a former marine corporal and you could see every lesbian (and bisexual, et al.,) woman in the room sit up and pay attention when she started telling stories about being in the military in what she called "the 1900s." She was sexy and funny in a way that really matched the general vibe of the room. Because her stuff was mostly personal stories, we were not expected to find any humor in a specific punchline. We could be delighted or horrified and when the funny stuff came, it could land bittersweet or out-loud guffaws without note because it wasn't "ba-dum, ba-dum, BUMP!" (cue laughter) kind of stuff. You could laugh when you wanted to. Her style reminded me of my favorite comedian Josh Johnson (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Josh_Johnson_(comedian)) You might know him as "the Klan ribs" guy.

I love her, and there were funny stories that got told by the other two, but... we were a very tough audience. I felt so badly for them!

Then I went to Kyell's reading at 10 pm because I needed to be there for the midnight slash slam. After the attendance at the comedy show, I thought, "Oh crap. The place is going to be a ghost town!" Kyell's reading was great. Kyell doesn't only write furry stuff, and so the first piece he read was from a fantasy novel. It was really good and I found out from him later that he sold out of the copies he'd brought of that one. So, that's a win.

The slash panel surprised me by being, for the hour, decently well attended. It is still always just me and Kyell bravely holding forth. One of these years I'm going to get an actual slam where people jump up to an open mike, but I mean, maybe this is just all part of my continued misconception of what conventions are like these days in terms of both attendance and "what the kids are into."

Kyell started us off and read a very sweet (also rare pair) fic from the Zootopia fandom. I waffled about what to read, almost deciding on some of my original character Star Trek:Adventures fic. But, thanks to a random recitation of tags (and consequential audience curiosity about the tag "weird biology," I ended up reading a Bleach smut fic rare pair (Renji/Urahara) called "The Perverted Shopkeeper and the Beast" which you can find here (https://archiveofourown.org/works/55608391) if you want and at your own risk.

A surprisingly lively ending to a very long day. I wasn't home and in bed until 1:30 AM.

This gay still parties!

===
I took this elsewhere to edit, so this is the font we get!

*It feels a bit weird going on with this after posting about Terry, but Terry was a big con goer and would have read a con report like this with great interest.

But I will have a lot to report from Gaylaxicon.

My favorite thing, however? Thanks to the rain this morning, we got an honest-to-god rainbow over Gaylaxicon's last day.

Image: photo taken from the hotel by attening professional, Kyell Gold.

Of course now that things are underway, it only now occurs to me that I could have easily had a Gaylaxicon icon and then those of you who wanted to skim or skip would have been forewarned.

I wavered on whether or not I wanted to go to the GoH dinner last night, especially when I found out that

tallgeese was not coming because he didn't feel well. The things that propelled me out the door were 1) Mason had planned to make a fancy curry dish for himself and Shawn.I tend to be the default cook when I'm home and I didn't want to come between that; and 2) I'd just been through one of these in Capclave and... frankly? Without the right people it can be fairly deadly.

We met out at Heather's in Minneapolis, a place I have never been before. They had a lovely, long table for us out on the patio. Turns out that Emma Törzs (rhymes with dirge--so, like terrge,) used to work with the Heather of Heather's, so that's kind of cool. I ended up, by accident, sitting in between KD Edwards and Emma, with Jim Johnson at the end of the table on the other side of KD (Keith.) I should have, as soon as she arrived, switched places with Emma because I was pretty good at keeping the left side of the table entertained and Emma ended up somewhat stuck in conversation with someone who was, shall we say, enthusiastic in a hyperfixated way about a singular subject about which is was unclear that Emma was similarly enthusiastic. I asked her, later, if I should have done more to rescue her, but she said it was enjoyable enough though she did appreciate Bast and my efforts when we were able to pry her back into the larger conversation. To be fair to this person? I do the same thing sometimes? We're all nerds here, So no shade.

After a very lovely dinner, where I got to watch KD Edward's shoulders visibly relax when I explained that Minnesota is a blue state and that Minneapolis/St. Paul is so blue it might as well be navy (he's living in North Carolina), we all trundled over to Dreamhaven for the reading.

I sort of thought that my herding cats portion of the evening was over, but Anton tapped me to do introductions so I jumped up to do that. I probably should have done more "here's a quick bio" of everyone and I managed to stumble over Emma's last name (terrrge! Like dirge!) which sucked, and I think, too, I should have had everyone go in the reverse order that we started with. Ending with Nghi Vo, instead of, like I ended up prompting, starting with her and ending with Jim Johnson. Especially since, unbeknowst to me, despite the fact that Jim is an author of several books, he decided instead to read the introduction to his newest Star Trek: Adventures book--which was... again, let's just say less high energy than spirit cannibals, which is what Nghi started with.

BUT! The event was super well attended. Dreamhaven ran out of chairs and, really, room. (That bookstore is what you find when you look up cramped and byzantine in the dictionary.) I don't have even an unofficial count, but if I had to guess I'd say over 30. We ended up even getting an on the spot sponsor-level membership for the convention out of the deal. It was by almost all measures a success.

So yay!

Now, before I head outside to do a little more painting on the fence, I need to time one of my stories. There's a woman in-town, Cole, who runs SciFi Reading Hour at the Bryant-Lake Bowl and she's looking for an emergency replacement for their November 2nd show. I don't know that she's considering me for that slot, but she did ask me to time one of my stories when read aloud. So, I need to do that for her in case it will work out.

Then, it's off to the convention this afternoon.

So either I will have a lot more to say over the next several days here on DW, or I will go silent for another long stretch. I'm leaving for the Washington DC area at 2:30ish today. Yeah, I know. It's a very weird time to be headed to DC, but DC is where Capclave is. Technically, Capclave is in a hotel in Rockville, MD. I'm going because

naomikritzer invited me as her "comealong" friend. As it happens, Minnesotan author (and friend to both of us,) Marissa Lingen will also be there because she's up for the WSFA Small Press Award for her short story "A Pilgrimage to the God of High Places" which appeared in Beneath Ceaseless Skies Issue 406 (May 2024). So that will be nice.

Y'all, I have not flown in an airplane since before the pandemic.

My family travels a decent amount, but almost always by car. I'm not necessarily nervous about air travel, but airports in the DC area have not been having the best time lately. So, you know, if you have spare white light, thoughts, prayers, rituals to your dark gods, etc., I would appreciate them. I am taking the travel stone. The travel stone probably deserves its own entry, but the basic story goes like this: once when Shawn was worried about getting lost when I needed to seperate from her, I picked up a piece of gravel from the ground and said, "This is ensure that you make it home safely." She made it home safely. Now, that stone, dubbed "the travel stone" has traveled with us overseas and across country--pretty much any time we leave home. It has even spawned an offspring, since Mason needs his own travel stone now that he's a world traveler of his own.

I am also taking along my whole ass computer. I could get along with just my phone, I suppose, but my phone lately has been very touchy about wanting to turn on when I hit the on button. Plus, I dunno. As I noted in previous journal entries, I have four panels, which is very good given what I nobody I am to the DC area fandom, but Naomi is a Guest of Honor. However, four panels for three days is very light for me, locally. Also I am a morning lark and am often up HOURS before the first panels ever start. I suspect I might have some time on my hands. If that's the case, I will find a nice corner of the hotel or a pleasant coffee shop and give you a con report. I mean, I promised one for Diversicon and then didn't deliver until after it was over. Still, there's something about being far from home an up hours before anyone else you're traveling with that I hope will be more conducive to writing to you. We'll see. Again, send those rituals to your dark gods and perhaps it will happen.

Okay, I've finished my breakfast. No more stalling. I should finish packing up the remaining things (including this computer) and do the light housecleaning that I promised my family I'd do before I left.

Hopefully, I'll write soon, but, if I fail, see you on the flipside!

Bee at the Minnesota Historical Society's pollenator garden, yesterday

My whole household was up this morning at 3:30 am to see Jas off to the airport. Even my notorious late-sleeper, Mason, got up to come along on the ride to the airport.

We are all going to miss Jas. Jas won my heart over not only because Mason is so clearly in love with them, but also because they cooked at least two evening meals for us! And, convinced Mason to do the dishes afterwards! Independent of each other both Shawn and I very much implied to Jas that not only were they welcome back any time, they were welcome to STAY!!

We did manage to pack them back with some gifts so hopefully we aren't failing this whole gift-giving ritual thing.

They will be missed! But, Mason is already making plans to go to them next (Oklahoma City in Oklahoma--a place he's been once already, but about which I know almost nothing.) We joked that we'd have to try to host Jas in the winter, so they could see Minnesota at its worst.

The news continues to be horrific. I guess I knew that the National Guard being called out on citizens for being Black was probably not that far behind the concentration camps for Brown folks, but JFC. I'm supposed to be traveling to the DC area in mid-September for Capclave and I have no idea what will be waiting for me there. Like, WTF. To be crystal clear--not that I fear for myself, because the last time I was in DC I walked through the area that the tour guide book suggested was unsafe with my then twelve year old son and we had a great time, the only thing I exposed him to was some poverty not unlike the neighborhood we live in back here in the Twin Cities. People were super friendly and helpful when we were lost. DC is very Black? This is, last time I checked, not a crime or indicative of criminal behavior. Maybe a person might feel safer in DC if, I dunno, they weren't racist.

So, yeah, here's a cool picture of a grasshopper (under the cut for the bugphobic)...

( WARNING: Bugs! )

For

sabotabby who is probably still on vacation and anyone else who might be interested, here's a link to our American Flagg episode of Mona Lisa Overpod: https://open.spotify.com/episode/4yFxNh4m8xcnHhLC3MB38Z

Speaking of podcasts, I had a very odd interaction with a potential panelist on a panel I proposed for Diversicon. I've been, as you know, gentle reader, fairly obsessed with doing programming committee work for a completely DIFFERENT covention, and so I haven't much talked about the fact that I will be one of the Guests of Honor at Diversicon 32, along with Naomi Kritzer. Diversicon is a local to me (Minneapolis/St. Paul, MN) convention and is coming up soon! September 5-7!

So, what happened was this: I got an email from someone in programming connecting me with a potential panelist. The initial email was very straight-forward. This person has been writing radio plays for a podcast down in Florida called the Radio Theatre Project. Sounds like a decent fit, right? But, this person added this to their communication with me, "I'd be happy to talk to Lyda and come up with a presentation" (emphasis mine). I wrote back and said, "Sure! I'm happy to try to figure out a way to combine our similar expertise into a panel of some sort. My podcast isn't fiction and I do none of the technical aspects of recording, editing, or producing it, but I'm sure there are some commonalities."

Immediately the other panelist seemed to want to back off, however. They talked about how "my audience" might not be interested in the things they were doing and that the two types of writing were fundamentally different. I acknowledged that, but tried to encourage this person, anyway, by saying that, yes, that's true, but podcasts are a thing in general and I'm happy to spend some time on the panel talking about the things they do and the things I do. This seemd to mollify this person, briefly.

BUT then they proposed getting together for a coffee to hammer out our "presentation" or to at least come up with talking points.

I have to admit, y'all? I was very confused by the continued use of the world presentation.

I had to write back and say, "It's a panel discussion, right? Something informal and off-the-cuff?" I told them I am always happy to pre-consider questions that might highlight this or that, but, like, this is one of those situations, I thought, where "this meeting could be an email." I did, however, try to say this kindly and suggest that while I was not against getting together for a coffee, per se, a panel discussion (if that's what we were having) wasn't probably worthy of something so intense.

I guess I pissed his person off somehow? I didn't mean to!

But, surprise, surprise, this person has now declined the offer to be on the panel with me. Which would be FINE, except for the fact that they felt the need to leave with this parting shot: "I listened to your MLOP 27: American Flagg podcast about cyberpunk. It is very focused and detailed. It offered a wealth of information for fans of serious science fiction. I'm not a serious sci-fi fan. I don't have the background and experience to speak about this kind of podcast. I've also found the easiest way to kill the humor in almost anything is to analyze it."

Like, is that directed at me? Or is this person saying that they don't want to analyze their own humor for fear of destroying the fun in it? (Their radio plays are humorous, apparently.) I decided to go with the latter, because it does no good to make enemies in a convention pool as small as Diversicon's. So, I told them how sorry I was that they have chosen to opt out and hoped that we could at least meet and chat at the con.

But the entire exchange was so baffling, you all. I know this person at least a little. Their name is familiar to me. They are NOT a stranger to the local science fiction and fantasy scene. They know what SFF convention panels are. The fact that they kept calling it a presentation has actually made me a little terrified that I'm actually going to be the ONLY person on this panel. SHOULD I BE PREPARING A LECTURE/PRESENTATION????? I am now a little fearful that maybe I should be!

I wouldn't be paranoid about this, but this has happened to me in the past.

I once proposed a panel for (I think) MarsCON about manga and manhwa and, when I arrived at the convention and got my hands on the program booklet, I discovered that I was, in fact, the only person talking about this subject FOR AN HOUR. Luckily, in that case, it wasn't until the next day and someone (Anton, probably,) had asked me if I needed any technical support for my panel/presentation and I said, "Okay, yes? Gimme some way to run a powerpoint presentation," and I went home that night and MADE ONE UP. I think I had exactly 5 people in the audience, but they were happy to see the covers of some titles I recommended, etc.

JFC.

If it is just me... what am I going to talk about for an hour by myself about podcasts? I mostly listen to fiction podcasts, but if people are there, as this proposed panelist suggested for my particular podcast, I don't know that there's enough to actually say about what it is that we do. I mean, Ka!lban does most of the hard work and I just show up and talk about whatever it is we've chosen as a topic. That's it. That's my entire experience. I don't know how this could possibly fill an hour!

I guess I'll find out!

Current Mood: confused

Minicon is this weekend. These are the panels to which I was assigned. There are a number on here that have me head scratching a bit, like, what do I know about the Monkey King? (Answer: almost nothing). I am, however, not going to complain about getting to be on more than one panel with Wesley Chu. That's pretty cool.

See some of you there, no doubt!

ON LEARNING HOW TO WRITE
Fri 5:30pm................................................................................ Veranda 1-4
The pathways to becoming a writer are many and varied. But not everyone can get a degree or attend expensive workshops. Can you learn to write by reading? How about reading and writing fan fiction? Is a beta-reader as good as an editor? Once you decide to sit down and write something, how do you improve your craft?
Deb Kinnard, Wesley Chu, Guy Stewart, Douglas Van Dyke, Ozgur K. Sahin,
Lyda Morehouse (M)

THE MONKEY KING GOES WEST
Sat 11:30am ............................................................................. Veranda 1-4
As the world becomes more diverse, the SF/F genre borrowed from everywhere. Eastern myths and magic are becoming increasingly familiar to Western audiences via books, movies and television dramas. Let’s talk about Monkey and his famous Journey to the West, martial arts, cultivators, yokai, immortal emperors, and other legends that are making their way to the rest of the world.
Peter Kacner, Anna Waltz, Delia Ihinger, Lyda Morehouse, Lisa Freitag (M)

THE PITFALLS AND BENEFITS OF WRITING HUMOR
Sat 7:00pm ................................................................Grand Ballroom East A
Great humor has the power to make the world feel a little bit sunnier. But what can you do when your slapstick falls short, your puns stink and everybody nose it, and your comedic timing…misses its cue? Come join us for a discussion about the often-underestimated work of making people laugh.
Eleanor Arnason, Wesley Chu, Melanie Meyer, Lyda Morehouse, Dex Greenbright (M)

THE RESTAURANT AT THE END OF THE BOOK
Sat 8:30pm ................................................................Grand Ballroom East A
Food often figures heavily in adventuring. Even video games have menus, these days. How do you invent food for your characters? Do you research planetary ecology, or historical cooking, or do you just make it up? Do you have any recipes? What fictional universe would you visit just to sample the cuisine?
Deb Kinnard, Wil Bastion, Steven Brust, CM Alongi, Ozgur K. Sahin, Lyda Morehouse (M)

WHO IS VOTING FOR TEAM ROCKET?
Sat 10:00pm………………………………………………….................... Veranda 1-4
The best worst anime characters: Who are your favorite villains? Who has the best evil laugh? Who has the best costume? Who would be the most fun to hang out with in bars? On missions? In the hot tub?
Lyda Morehouse, Jason Otting, Dani Sommer, Aaron Vander Giessen, Anna Waltz

FRIDAY

6: 00 pm The Queering of Good Omens. The second season of Good Omens had an explosion of canonically queer characters and couples. There were lesbians, nonbinary demons, and queer side characters galore. Yet our mains, Crowley and Aziraphale, couldn't seem to get it together, despite "the kiss." As we prepare for the Second Coming, let's talk about the good and the bad of the second season. Lyda Morehouse, Naomi Kritzer, Don Kaiser

9:45 pm Lesbian Space Opera: A Reading and Q&A by Lyda Morehouse. Lyda Morehouse has signed a deal for a new lesbian space opera trilogy. Come and join her for a reading and discussion about the forthcoming first novel in the trilogy.

SATURDAY

1:45 pm Yaoi and Yuri, the 2023 Edition. This panel is becoming a staple of ConFABulous, so it's time to move beyond 101 definitions of this manga genre. What's new (or new to you) and fun this year? There may be some discussion of manhwa and manhua (as well as anime and dongha,) but we're sticking with 2-D for this conversation. Lyda Morehouse, Jason Tucker

7:00 Dance in the Neon-Pixelated Dark: A Thirsty Sword Lesbians Cyberpunk Homebrew. A rogue artificial intelligence that has escaped its corporate masters into the dark and rain-spattered streets of Neo-Toyko’s Akihabara’s “Electric Town.” A sleek, sexy agent of MegaCorp offers the thirsty lesbians gathered at the Potable Pussy Coffee Shop a hard-to-resist bounty to return this rebellious robot. Will they accept? If so, will they be able to find this runaway android before the machine-hating Luddite Cult gets their hands on it? Thirsty Sword Lesbians RPG. Simple rules will be taught. Up to 7 players.
GM: Lyda Morehouse.

SUNDAY

3:30 pm Writing for RPGs. What are some best practices when designing adventures or sourcebooks for tabletop RPGs, either for publication or for your own gaming group? Discussion topics may include sources of inspiration, research and preparation, game balance, and having fun! James Satter, John Everett Till, Lyda Morehouse

5:00 pm Why Do Queer Women Write so Much M/M? This phenomenon has been true since the first Spock/Kirk slash was penned in the late 1960s. But this fan fiction trend has been mainstreamed lately with books like Everina Maxwell's Winter's Orbit, T. Kingfisher's Paladin's Hope, and an entire romance m/m genre (https://www.goodreads.com/genres/m-m-romance). Why aren't these queer and straight ladies writing F/F? Where are the male, gay authors? What are some concerns about this trend--are we being mainstreamed right into heteronormativity? Lyda Morehouse, Naomi Kritzer, Lauren Crabtree

A lot of people make the case that in-person cons mean more.... everything, I guess?

What's funny is that, for me, I probably participated more during Virtual WisCON than I did at this year's in-person CONvergence. I was on panels at neither, but I did go to some programming at both. I maybe hit nearly a half-dozen panels at Virtual WisCON? I went to ONE at CONvergence. Well, okay, one and a main stage performance.

So, how did it all go?

The above might sound like a complaint, but it really isn't. I had a lovely time. I just didn't DO very much at con. I ended up meeting up with

naomikritzer on the light rail (it goes right past the end of my block) and we made our way to the convention center. After getting our badges and discovering that CONvergence no longer requires proof of vaccination (though they did require masking in most places,) I followed Naomi to her first panel, "The Big I."

"The Big I" was a panel about using the first person... so, and no shade on Naomi or her fellow panelists, but not exactly a contentious or dynamic subject matter. Nevertheless, I wanted to scream at one point. Actually, at several points. I had to sit on my hands. I had to distract myself on my phone because I had made a conscious decision not to derail the panel, for the sake of my dear friend. However, I nearly died when I heard panelists say things like, "Well, you could never tell the Murderbot stories in third person, because all you'd have are the actions," and "Of course, in third person you can't get into people's heads."

I'M SORRY, WHAT?

I ended up writing a furious string of texts to my wife at home. Because someone needed to know that the panelists seemed to be confusing point of view (1st, 3rd) with narrative voice. FFS, you absolutely can "get into people's heads" in 3rd person, it's called close and/or limited 3rd person. You don't have to do this (which is the fun flexibility of 3rd person), but you absolutely can use the main character's "voice" in 3rd to describe scenes or people. You are not required to write like a newspaper article. "He wore a tie." Instead, you can say, "The tie Frank wore was hideous. Bob hated it. It reminded him of his late father-in-law." Or whatever the fuck. You can use long, rambling sentences in third person to imply that's how the character thinks. You can use shorter sentences and chose words that sound militarist to imply, in 3rd person, that's how your character sees the world.

It is, without a doubt, EASIER to do this sort of thing in 1st person, but it's not, by any stretch of the imagination, impossible in 3rd. (or 2nd for that matter.)

I never went to another panel after that.

This is why, in fact, I rarely sit and listen to panels. I have OPINONS. I feel feelings very strongly about things that really don't matter, like verbs, and narrative voice and whether or not the ending of Bleach sucked rocks (Spoiler: yes.) I'm kind of argumentative? But, I'm totally sitting, very sincerely at that booth that also says, "I Believe a Thing: Change my mind," because one of my favorite things in life is a spirited debate. My mind can be changed! So, like, maybe I'm wrong about p.o.v. and narrative voice, but I'll tell you what. If I'd been on that panel it would have been hella exciting!

But, anyway, after that panel I don't entirely remember what else I did? I may have headed home because I'd sort of spontaneously decided to join Naomi and didn't have good plans for dinner. She'd offered to go somewhere with me, but I would have had to hang out quite a bit longer and I wasn't up for it. Not when I was feeling all my narrative voice FEELS.

I did go back on Friday evening, however. I ate dinner at home and then hopped the light rail again. I will tell you that taking the light rail always makes me feel so grown-up, like a grown-up who lives in a City. I'm also always fascinated to watch people living their lives and there are always a lot of characters on public transportation, you know. My friend Barth Anderson used to write-up some of the random conversations he'd had or overheard on the bus and I thought of him a lot as I listened to a guy very sincerely explain to his friend on the other side of the phone that you should never buy a Mercedes Benz; Always buy Honda.

I discovered during the long walk down Nicolet Mall that there's a group of citizens who are patrolling as violence disruptors. I ended up accidentally pacing them on one of my walks to the convention hotel, but it was fascinating to overhear their conversations, as well.

Once at the con on Friday, I texted Naomi and discovered she was still at dinner. I decided to head to watch Ms. Shannon Paul do her comedy routine on the main stage. I am generally fond of comedy shows, and no one else in my family really is? So, it was a treat to watch her, although I really noticed the extent to which certain types of comedy require the audience to buy into certain kinds of normativity, most of which, I simply don't experience/never have. Like, I apparently fail, "would you eat a pie that appeared on your porch that none of your friends claim to have sent you?" (My answer: pie!) Long story, but Ms. Shannon was trying out a bit and explained that a mystery pie had been delivered to her house and she threw it away without ever opening the box because "of course." But, she wanted to know who in the audience would have tried the pie and which of us wanted to know what kind of pie it was. I wanted to know, and I wanted to try it. I am apparently a freak of nature. Not a lot of people agreed with me. I will say that for the rest of her routine, I found myself thinking about whether or not the scenarios she presented were things I would do or not and it kind of changed the humor for me? Like I say above, I noticed the ways in which much of the humor required buy-in to a "normal," because for things to be funny they had to fall outside of it, you know?

Anyway.

Naomi and I ended up attempting to make a "bar con" at the CONvergence hotel by hanging out in the lobby. It worked? It took some time to gather some friends, but we did at least run into some folks I'd been hoping to see. This is a perennial problem for me at this "new" hotel because I just haven't figured out where people go. The conference rooms also go up in a central column, rather than being spread out flat, so there isn't as much "passing people in the halls" because people are going up and down different sets of escalators?

The dealer's room was also surprisingly sparse. The main audience they seemed to be catering to was RPG gamers, which includes me, but like almost every booth seemed to have sets of dice for sale? Given that the con's focus this year was cosplay, I was a bit surprised to see ZERO clothiers in the dealer's room--no kimono, corset, boot, or steampunk hat/goggle makers/sellers. It was kind of weird? There was one bookseller, though they didn't have a large selection (it was not Dreamhaven or Uncles.) I dunno. I did have some luck finding fun things to buy in artist's alley, however.

The con, of course, went on for two more days, but I didn't.

I still had fun? But, it was very low participation for me this year.

There were a number of factors in my decision to go to WisCON virtually this year, but the main one was that I'd have to turn around almost immediately after returning home from a road trip to do another one. Even for someone like me who loves to road trip, that was too much.

However, as I've reported in the past, WisCON has run a good virtual con, so I had no hesitation dropping the very cheap virtual membership ($25) last minute in order to attend online. This year the virtual track consisted of a Discord with multiple channels, hybrid panels (basically in-person, but streamed to Zoom), and Zoom-only panels.

I didn't do much of anything at the con on Friday because I was busy doing things with my family. However, I got a taste of Wiscon via an email from

naomikritzer in which we chatted about the workshop critique group that she'd facilitated. Emailing with her reminded me of the one time I did the workshop as a facilitator... (I remember it well because

davidlevine was in my group and he was already so sufficiently advanced that the sum of my critique consisted of where to send "Tale of the Golden Eagle.") I think I also did the workshop as a nascent writer being critiqued, but I have no idea when that might have been--sometime in the 1990s?? I was just browsing the list of GoHs, wondering if seeing a particular name would jog my memory and the only one that did was Melissa Scott, because I interviewed her for the local gay paper, focusPOINT, and sold the unabridged interview to Science Fiction Chronicle that year, which, according to the website was 1997. Not my first WisCON, I actually attended WisCON for the first year in 1984, because Elizabeth A. Lynn was a guest and I talked my father into driving me and my then-boyfriend, Ben K., down to Madison for a day, just so I could see this lesbian writer FOR REASONS (Sorry, Ben!)

The thing is, I also remember deciding to see if I could sell that Melissa Scott interview because a friend of mine who was working at the gay paper as a reporter said, "Since you're going anyway...." so I'm sure I was attending fairly regularly before this, but when exactly I started going regularly, I have no idea. I should ask Laurie Winter if she remembers, because I used to hitch a ride with her, Terry Garey, Rebecca M., and Eleanor Arnason.

At any rate, on Saturday my first panel was a hybrid one, which I wanted to catch because Naomi was on it. It was called "What I Wish I'd Known When I'd Started" (Writing is implied.) I have to say kudos to whoever set up their hybrid panel room, because the camera was positioned close enough that I could see everyone--including read their names on the table tents!--and I could hear everything in the room, even the un-mic'ed audience members (even though the moderator very carefully repeated questions from the audience.) I did miss the beginning of this panel because I was figuring out where and when and how, but someone also took abridged notes (like, while it was happening, a kind of live-stream) in the Discord Channel, so I could easily catch up. Naomi and I have been talking a lot about normalizing mid-career slumps and, apparently in the part I missed, she talked about her own. Two of the other panelists were self-published and so the topics hopped all over the place between trad, self-, and hybrid publishing. It was a good panel. Because the tech was so slick, I really felt like I was there.

The next panel I attended was Zoom-only and that one was "The Trans History of WisCON," which I wanted to see because my friend

bcholmes was on that. Speaking of nostalgia, the other reason I wanted to go is because I was on a very early trans panel about trans representation in SF/F because my Archangel Protocol books feature a character who is a trans woman (one of the four archangels, actually.) But, this panel has become rather infamous (or famous?) because Charlie Jane Anders, myself, BC, and Elizabeth Bear were on it--and Charlie Jane now talks about it as though it was her and Bear and "some other people." (<--a direct quote from a panel she was on later in the con.) But, I remember it well for a number of reasons, but mostly because of a really profoundly pointed (in a good way) comment from the audience from

jiawen in response to Bear's "Well, if you're lacking the right kind of representation, you should write what you want to read!" And jiawen rightly pointed out that not everyone wants to be a writer, but readers still want to see themselves reflected in their fiction. That stayed with me for years and years and years, and I strove to live up to that directive in everything I wrote.

My memories aside, the "Trans History of WisCON" panel was very good, although they had one woman who skirted right up to the edge of being a little bit behind the times, but she was self-aware of her lack of understanding, and that made a huge difference, you know? The rest of the panel was supper fascinating and full of a lot of things I was not obviously privy to throughout WisCON's history. BC suggested that 2000 was the first year she'd attended and that seems unreal to me, because I can hardly remember WisCON without imagining both BC and jiawen there.

At some point in here, jiawen and I jumped on to jitsi to do our version of barcon, where we hang out and gossip about the con and talk about life, the universe, and everything. It's become a tradition for us at Virtual WisCON and it's surprising how much those kind of things really help a person feel like they're there, at the con, and not just spectating from a vast distance.

Also, later on Saturday evening, I also attended "Tell Us About Your Virtual RPG" for obvious reasons. As anyone who reads my blog regularly knows, I'm in an RPG that has been virtual from the start, some four years ago, with a bunch of folks here on DW. As I told jiawen later, the panel was interesting (in the non-Minnesotan sense) but not mind-blowing. I find that Zoom panels are often very 101? Like today, I attended a Zoom-only panel called, "Writers Groups and Gaming Groups" because my friend Kristy was on that (and it's something that jiawen proposed based on things that she and I have talked about) and I asked a question about problematic members and what to do with them. And this isn't meant as shade on the panelists, but they all just talked about the easiest solution (which also assumes that all members are expendable, and unteachable which isn't actually always true) which is "just kick them out." Also, as someone who has been the facilitator of a number of writers' groups over the decades that I've been writing, there is no "JUST" in kicking someone out. It's actually always a hard and painful process, especially if your group is full of peers (which mine always are. I don't set myself up in an "instructor" roll, even when I'm the one organizing a group.) If I had been on the panel, I would have liked some frank discussion about how in writers groups (less so in gaming groups,) there are members who have elevated status in the group because they have more publications and that complicates "just kick them out." I mean, in gaming, this is akin to "what if your GM is the problematic one?"

At any rate, I felt like the Virtual RPG panel also operated on this level, which was kind of Virtual RPGs 101. Which didn't make it a bad panel, I just didn't feel like I'd learned much or heard anything fully new attending it. Although, the Virtual RPG panel did have an interesting discussion about how to deal with maps, mini figs, and the like, virtually, but it got more technical than I was interested in since I'm (so far) never the GM in these games.

On Sunday, today, the only thing I did was attend the Gaming Groups/Writers Groups panel, which, as I note above, did not knock my socks off, but neither was it a complete waste of time. I'm trying to decide right now if I will go to the streamed GoH speeches. Rivers Solomon and Martha Wells have not been, so far as I could determine on any of the streamed or Zoom-only panels (nope, I just missed "Healing from Cispremacy"/Rivers and "Intersectional Robots"/Wells), so I may want to go to at least say that I've seen them/heard them talk. There is one gaming-related Zoom-only panel tomorrow, Monday, that I might check out, but probably this it for me?

I realize that milage varies substantially with Virtual Cons, but I have always loved them. I wish they would continue more robustly than I suspect they will? I really love not having to leave my house to attend. I can afford SO MANY more cons this way, just in general, and when done right I don't really miss the in-person experience. Like, Discord (which, to be fair, I am deeply comfortable with) can feel like those random hallway conversations and they almost always have channels labelled "bar" or "lobby con" so you can "hang out" there and get something akin to the in-person experience. I say this as an extrovert, who likes people? So, I don't know. Like, I say, obviously, this is very subjective. I'm a big proponent.

This last weekend, I attended Minicon 56. (Guests of honor: Martha Wells, Sara Felix, and Greg Ketter.)

Since the pandemic, I haven't been hanging out at cons the way I used to. I tend to drive in for my panels and then leave. Since I'm not eating at restaurants yet, either, this cuts into a lot of my social time at a con. Even so, this has been a nice way to ease back into things.

On Friday night, I had my first panel at 8:30 pm. If you're curious how this one went, I believe that Justin Grays recorded it and will have some kind of write up about it over at xyr blog: https://www.justingrays.org/my-blog. I was the moderator and if I had to rate myself on a scale of 1 (being worst) to 10 (being best), I would give myself a solid 5. I felt a bit hampered by the fact that there were five panelists and three microphones. The microphones were also, for some reason, taped down to the floor and, thus, their cords could only be moved a few inches in any direction. I tried to mitigate this problem of three people sharing one mic, by sitting on the "wrong" side of the table. I found that while that worked for panelist wrangling, it did nothing for being able to track/sense audience response.

Plus, not gonna lie, I'm not at my best after 7 pm. I am a very early-to-bedder.

All those excuses aside, I think the panel went OKAY. I may have started us off on the wrong foot by not taking some time at the very beginning to define parameters and general terms. We were using robots, androids, machine learning, and AI all rather interchangeably. At least one audience member felt the need to call us out on that near the end, and, honestly, that's on me. I also was far less interested, personally, in REAL LIFE artificial intelligence (or machine-learning) than I was in fictional representations. If I'd been a bit more on top of things, I would have been clear that was what I, personally, wanted to talk about and what I'd be directing most of the conversation towards.

I do think that, substantively, by the end, it was an interesting discussion.

I hung out in the panel room with

naomikritzer and Justin for awhile talking about menopause, being back at cons after a long hiatus, and life in general. I like them both a lot and, had it not already been deeply past my bedtime, I could have hung out a lot longer.

Saturday morning I was initially slotted to be part of the author smorgasbord readings, but ended up needing to cancel. ( Content Warning: discussion of stillbirth from 20 years ago )

So that was a rough way to start the second day of con, but time well spent.

My next panel of the weekend was at 1pm, so I stayed and had lunch with Shawn, and then headed out to the con. As a random note, had great parking all weekend. I was always able to find a first tier spot. The lot was always decently full, but it seemed that whenever I need one, a spot appeared!

My one o'clock was Humor in SF and, technically, Eleanor Arnason was the moderator, but, since I felt I had less to say on the subject than she did, I took over moderating by asking all the questions and generally making sure that the panelists all got a chance to answer. Because of this we kind of dug a little deep and tried to tackle the question of what makes humor work? Generally a fun panel, though.

My second panel followed directly on that one and it was GLBTQIA+ representation in the media and that one got... I don't know a person could call it derailed, but we ended up down the rabbit hole of What The F*ck is Up With Publishers These Days and honestly that discussion is always depressing, but it's also really clear that the pendulum is swinging again towards queer book burning and loss of representation. So, while the conversation was good and necessary, the mood was low.

I went home after that mostly because, given our morning, I didn't want to be away from Shawn for too long.

Sunday was my longest day at the con and, of course, I arrived for my 10 am panel to a parking lot already clearing out. I tried to get coffee at the nearest Caribou, but even though they did not have a "Closed for Easter Sunday" sign on the door, they clearly were. The place was dark and the doors locked. Thwarted in my attempt to get extra caffeinated, I headed into con, where I promptly ran into Anton P., who is everyone's favorite guest liaison. I did not meant to complain in such a way that would activate Anton's liaison instincts, apparently, I said just the right magical words, that when I was five minutes into moderating the "Professionals Writing Fan Fiction" in walked Anton with a VERY LARGE, very welcome hot mocha for me.

If Martha Wells hadn't been speaking at that very moment, I suspect he would have been greeted with a round of applause.

This panel was by far my best. I mean, it may help that the panelists were all people (with the exception of Martha) that I knew well, and, of course, this is a subject that generally garners a lot of enthusiasm--both from the audience and the panelists. So, mostly my job as moderator was to keep the ball rolling and make sure that everyone got a chance to talk. Martha Wells has clearly been kicking around the fan fic community probably longer than most of us on that panel (Anna Waltz might be the only other contender,) but I was a relative newbie having only fully fallen into fanfic writing in 2012. To be fair to me, I was reading fan fiction longer than that, but mostly what I'd do, as a fan, was discover the Buffy or Star Wars fic I was yearning for, read it, and that was my entire interaction with the fan community. Martha sounds like she was already writing fic way back in the APA days, which is pretty impressive.

I rode high on the adrenaline of that panel (and, of course, the extra boost of caffeine, curtesy of Anton) and so I spent the several hours between that panel and my last one at 2:30 pm hanging out at the con, mostly with Naomi, but then I was joined by a bunch of other folks in the Green Room.

The final panel I was on was called the "Power of Play" and suffered very greatly for being scheduled during straggler con. Most people were cleared out by the time we were starting up, including the art show and the dealer's room. The only people left, I think, were the fabric swap folks. But, despite low attendance and end-of-con energy, I think the discussion went okay. We had a very broad definition of play, actually, that meant we could talk about all sorts of fun things including "weird road trips" as play, and "I threw myself a divorce party" as play. One of the audience members introduced me to the idea of "hacker spaces," which is apparently an anarchist answer to "maker spaces," many of which are project/build oriented and have some kind of sponsored hierarchy, like a library staff, etc. Hacker spaces apparently don't require that you end up with a finished THING, but just that you go and mess around with things, which sounds very fun, indeed. We, of course, also talked about the lasting power of role-playing games and other games adults are allowed as play.

I would say that, for me, it was a good con.

I'm looking forward to, at some point, being comfortable enough to go out to eat with people again, etc., but, in the meantime, this was probably the closest I've come in a long time to feeling like the pre-isolation part of the pandemic times.

I had been expecting to run into more people that I knew--at least two of my current students were supposedly in attendance--but I think the fact that Saturday was my least present day contributed to that.

How was your weekend? Did those of you who celebrate Easter have a good one? Do I know anyone celebrating Ramadan? Or, perhaps, Death of Margaret Thatcher day? I understand that Passover is still happening, and many of you are in the throes of that, so how is that going?

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:
The conspiracy guy from "Sherlock," I believe

The conspiracy guy from "Sherlock," I believe

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.

My first panel yesterday was at 3:30 pm. So, I spent much of the morning doing the usual Saturday morning things, and left for the light rail at around 2 pm. By chance, there happened to be a Street Art Festival happening on Nicollet Mall. I snapped a few shots of some of the cool art.

Image: Art on the sidewalk of downtown Minneapolis. A woman and a wave, unfinished.

Image: A spray paint street art booth in downtown Minneapolis. A Black girl, surrounded by vibrant colors, staring out at us intently.

Image: Food booths set up under a skyway.

Technically, I was meant to have two panels Saturday, but I bailed on my 7 pm panel in favor of my Star Trek RPG. The panel I did attend was "What Cyberpunk got Right," which was amazing. Rob Callahan who was the moderator did an amazing job, partly by acting as an emcee who walked around on the floor of the room and passed around the microphone so that people in the audience could be heard.

I'm trying to remember what we talked about, though. I feel like, in this case, even though the topic was broad, the genre is not, so it was much easier to focus on comparing the fiction of the past (in a way, though many of us confessed to still writing it,) to the now. We talked about what makes a consciousness, how laws might define that, if machines have rights (like copyright of the art and stories they produce,) and kind of on and on in a lovely meandering way. It very much felt like a conversation with a room full of smart and interesting people? It helped that there were no That Guys in attendance, I think.

Today I had my last panel "Culture and Diversity in Anime," which I moderated. I thought about doing a Rob, but the room wasn't very crowded and so I ended up staying up with the panelists. However, since the other panelists were all BIPOC, I happily did my job as a moderator and asked questions and then stepped back to let them do their thing. It was one of my better panels, honestly.

So, that's a wrap, folks. See you next year.

Yesterday started with a conundrum.

On Thursday, I just drove directly to the con and parked in the hotel lot. It was super convenient, etc., but I never even looked at the prices. I sort of foolishly assumed that the rates would be reasonable. As I was leaving after two hours? TWENTY-FIVE DOLLARS (for my international friends, that's about 31 Canadian dollars, 21 English pounds, or 24.50 Euros). INSANE. So, I woke up yesterday very determined not to bankrupt the family parking in the hotel ever again. It was raining very hard when I woke up, and so the thought of public transportation daunted me a bit. It looked like I'd be able to get a ride in with

naomikritzer , but then Mason reminded me that I'd promised him a ride to pick up some stuff at his work, so the timing didn't work out. I ended up taking the light rail in much later (my first panel was at 12:30 pm,) and that was FINE. It's a long walk down Nicollet Mall, since the light rail drops off almost at the butt end opposite part of that area of downtown, but there were buses I could have hopped on? So, it turned out okay.

I tell myself I probably needed the exercise.

My first panel was "What If...?" a fan panel about the Marvel animated series of the same name. There was nothing overtly wrong with that panel, but, as I was telling another friend of mine afterwards, something about it felt very 1996. There were five panelists, two of which were women and one woman of color. The dude bros at the far end of the table were all comic book fans and had a very insular vibe? Like, I don't think they were INTENTIONALLY ignoring the female (and queer) end of the table, but they kind of liked the sound of their own voices a lot? (I mean, that can definitely be me in some situations, so no shade, necessarily.) BUT, at one point, I just grabbed my mic and started asking my fellow lady-appearing panelist questions. And, I am also a long-time comic book fan, but I think there is value from hearing from people who are only MCU fans. A lot of value. I say that because there was a bit of an unspoken "Comic book fans are the One True Marvel Fan" vibe, as well, which no one ever said, but was heavy in the air, you know?

Anyway, I feel like I had to fight a bit to be heard on that panel and since the pandemic started the amount of spoons I have to make that happen is pretty low.

The "Faith in SF&F" panel was... well, I was talking to Naomi afterwards and I don't think she saw it as quite the disaster I felt it was. There were, in my opinion, a couple of things working against it from the start: 1) the topic is almost too broad, and 2) it was happening at CONvergence where the line between "are we talking about speculative FICTION, specifically, or are we talking about the entirety of SF/F fandom?" is very nebulous. The moderator did their very best, but religion is also a hot button topic and so, at one point, That Guy in the audience asked whether or not all of Judaism is negated by the fact that there is no archeological evidence for Exodus. If I had been the moderator, I would have said, "Either reframe this question to include spec fic, or shut the f*ck up? This is never the venue to call into question anyone's religious beliefs." BUT THAT DIDN'T HAPPEN. So, we had to have a whole ten minutes of one of the panelist making all sorts of counter arguments which were 100% unnecessary, because religions are based on faith? So who the hell cares if there is archeological evidence for any of it?? (Says the former Unitarian, now Witch, who has had to sit through these arguments, particularly among pagans who really, really want the Stone Age goddess worship to be a singular, unbroken line between then and now, rather than sh*t a bunch of weirdos thought up during the Victorian Age. For myself? If the shoe fits, who cares who made it or when!")

ANYWAY, you can see how that nonsense derailed us.

It wasn't our only moment off the rails, though? One of our panelists really, really wanted to talk about the Satanic Panic. This came up in our email chain pre-convention, and I might have tried a bit harder, if I were the moderator, to figure out exactly what they wanted to discuss--if only because its connection to SF/F is kind of tenuous? I mean, there was a whole lot of freaking out about D&D, which I remember having lived through this period in American history, but role-playing games are starting to stretch what I would consider speculative FICTION. I mean, yes, they are part of nerd culture and are a kind of private, living fiction, but are they stories in the traditional sense and, even then, what point do you want to make about the Satanic Panic and its effect on D&D or other spec fic related issues? Like, are there any novels that actually deal with this? Maybe that terrible movie with Tom Hanks, Mazes and Monsters, from 1982, which I feel like I saw a novelization of in my school library (and maybe even read), but otherwise I can't think of any bit of fiction that was either directly affected by this (banned or what have you) unless what the person on the end wanted to talk about was horror movies? Again, movies aren't technically FICTION in the strictest sense? So, I dunno. I might have been more specific as a moderator and said, "Okay, but what specifically do you want to say about how the Satanic Panic relates to spec fic?" and try to draw that person out a bit more. Like, they barely got a chance to talk at all? I would have tried to coax more out of them, in general.

But, if you ignore those two wildly divergent tangents, the panel was OK? I'm not convinced that there was more substance than flailing about, but some panels are like that.

I hung out with Naomi and a couple of other friends in between my two panels in the Con Suite (and then later outside on the Nicollet greenway, which was LOVELY,) and one of the things that kept coming up whenever I complained about how a panel went and how everything kind of felt a bit like the entire con was reverting to some less enlightened age is that apparently CONvergence is having a bit of a personnel shake-up? I don't know very many details about this, except that there was apparently some kind of great exodus of volunteers this summer due to some cult of personality types deciding to retire/quit/what have you. And we speculated that some of the things that used to be done by careful assigning of panelists, etc., might just have become, "Whelp, whatever!" in a mad rush. So, maybe that's part of why the whole thing feels like an earlier version of itself? I don't know about that, but it's interesting to consider.

Meanwhile, I got my final ChiCon panel assignments and, as my UK friends might say, I am well chuffed. I will post about them after I finish all this CONvergence write-up stuff.

I probably won't be able to keep up a full con report, but I thought I'd try.

Despite my better judgment, I'm doing CONvergence in-person this weekend. I will say that registration was pretty slick. As you approached the registration area, someone directed you to the first table, where you showed your ID and proof of vaccine card. If you passed that first hurdle, they gave you a validation card (kind of like when you go and vote), which you then hand off to the people pulling badges. It was slow, but I made it through the line in less than a half hour. (I have seen lines for registration at CONvergence that were kind of insane, like wrapping around the whole hotel floor and then doubling back on itself.)

The moderator of panel was willing to remind people in the audience that masks were NOT optional, too, which was nice. There was a brief discussion before the panel started where it was asked if the panelists were willing to remove their masks. I'm never willing, so everyone on the panel followed my lead.

The panel I was on today was called "Never Meet Your Gods." The description was: What happens when regular people interact with mythic figures, such as Lucifer or Odin? Participants: Aimee Kuzenski (mod), Larry Swain, and Lyda Morehouse.

I have to admit that I have been fighting a headache all day. (This was the second one in a row for me and since I normally don't get headaches at ALL, I took a COVID test this afternoon just to be sure - it was negative.) So, I did not go into this panel at my very best. Plus, I don't entirely feel like myself with long hair, so I was definitely fighting more awkwardness than I normally have sitting on a panel.

That being said, I think it went pretty well. I was surprised how many people came to the panel, given how barebones the description was. Aimee did a pretty good job moderating, though at one point I joked that some of her questions felt a bit like a pop quiz that I was not entirely ready for. Name your favorite human/god interaction! What are the best/worst depictions of gods!? My answers all started with, "Uhhhhh...." Like I said, I was just not batting a 100. I did NOT ace the pop quiz.

I was also easily dragged off topic because one of my fellow panelists, Larry Swain, is a Biblical scholar and that's my catnip. So, at least one point we went down a Biblical rabbit hole all the way to Simon Magus.... apparently Larry is going to be on a panel about weird Biblical stories and I might have to see if I can make that (okay, looking for it on the schedule, it looks like it's on Sunday. I may be able to stay because I think I have an early morning anime panel that day.)

Anyway, I do think that because I was easily distracted and not terribly on the ball, it was not a top ten performance? Was it a good and lively discussion? YES. Was it write-home-about amazing? Probably not.

After the panel I hung out with some old friends for a few minutes--Bill and Melissa and Leah Cutter.

Tomorrow's panels are:

12:30 pm "What If" Inspired by the Marvel Comics series, What If? is an animated anthology series on Disney+. Narrated by The Watcher, the series explores alternate timelines in the multiverse showing options if major moments from the MCU films occurred differently. Participants: Robert Becka, Tim Lieder, Mark Lundberg (mod), Charlene Holm, Lyda Morehouse
3:30 pm "Faith & Religion in Speculative Fiction" What does it take to make faith and religion "work" in speculative fiction? Are those factors the same as those required for faith in real life? How has reading or writing about religion influenced your own beliefs and practices? Participants: Tim Lieder, phillip andrew bennett low (mod), Hertzey Hertz, Naomi Kritzer, Lyda Morehouse

I am not planning on attending CONvergence this year. There are several factors that went into my decision. I am ready to do a lot of socialization, finally, but.... not with three thousand people, indoors. But, on top of that August is generally going to be a crazy month for me because we will be sending Mason off to Connecticut for school (Wesleyan University, for those who are interested.)

When they made their decision to go in-person, I was asked if I wanted badges for me and Mason and I told them just what I told you. Next year, I'll be up for it, but this year I am taking a pass for reasons of COVID + College.

Somehow the message didn't quite get through? Possibly because, long ago, I also filled out volunteer form? I did so, however, when there was still talk of possibly hybrid, we don't know.

A couple days ago my panel assignments arrived.

They both looked great? I would happily done both of them (and more) in any other year. And, I re-read the descriptions a bunch of times but there were notes like "panelists should arrive in the room x minutes beforehand," and I started to worry that this was not a virtual room they were talking about, but a physical, in-person one. The biggest clue was that there was no link to a Zoom or any other technical info for an online recording/live-stream.

I hated doing it, because I don't want to get on someone's off list. but I had to say, "If this is in-person, which it seems to be, I am not attending this year. Please take me off?"

I feel especially bad about this because, independently, I happened to be part of an earlier email chain of a half dozen people who, when asked if they'd be willing to be a warm body to help save a panel that a friend of mine wanted to turn viable, EVERY single ONE of them also said that they wouldn't be attending in-person this year. Given that experience, I'm also wondering if I killed two panels? I'm a little worried that they might be having a talent problem--I would find it difficult to believe that CONvergence, of all local cons, couldn't find enough volunteers to sit on panels, but maybe? Especially since they're limiting attendance?

I will say that I was surprised that they didn't do a better job with their online con. Last year, I took part in at least two panels at Virtual CONvergence. One was a live-stream and the other was a recorded reading (which they scheduled opposite one another? They had a full weekend schedule to fill and my fans had literally a single choice, either listen to my reading OR watch me talk, live. I mean, I don't have a lot of fans? But that one person had a tough choice! Which, I mean, I was finally on two panels at once, which is kind of a dream of every author...) But, anyway, that part seemed to be exactly like most on-line cons I'd been to that year, but I found their chat/hangout space to be much harder to navigate. For reasons known only to the con com, CONvergence didn't use one of the pandemic-standard chat platforms, like Discord or Slack. Instead, they had their own web site that you had to remember to go to? I think I went to it once. It's weird when smaller, less structured/organized/well funded cons did a better job with their pandemic cons... and so I very much understand the desire to be back in the venue that they shine in?

But this also makes me fairly certain that there will not be a hybrid option for CONvergence, which make me sad. I am fond of virtual cons?

Am I the only who is going to miss them??

Tie-dyed fabric close-up, many colored stripes.

Image: A piece of tie-dyed fabric hanging on a clothesline. It is a classic rainbow striped number.

Yesterday, it was lovely outside so I decided to tackle a project that I'd been meaning to do for awhile. After the whole medical craziness of Monday, arts and crafts were just what I needed to de-stress.

Several weeks ago, Shawn picked up some sheets on the "buy nothing" Facebook group for our neighborhood. They had looked decently blue in the photo, but when we bought them home they were a very washed out barely-there color. Shawn had been planning to use the fabric as an accent for some of her rugs and was vaguely disappointed. On the drive home, I asked, "What if I tie-dyed them?" Shawn got suddenly very excited by the idea of trying a rug made out of tie-dyed material, and so we got serious about finding a tie dye kit that was easy and color-fast. Shawn found a kit for kids on Amazon: https://www.amazon.com/Tulip-One-step-Tie-Dye-Party-Kit/dp/B01FV60TAS/

I will say, this could not have been easier.

tie-dye on a clothes line

Image: a bunch of fun patterns of tie-dye on a clothesline.

I will admit to having had WAY too much fun. In fact, my hands are still purple because I blew off the instructions to wear gloves (in the Before Times, I would be mortified. Right now? I'm still very much, "by the time people see me, these will be back to normal." Not actually considering that, you know, I might go off to buy coffee this morning.)

Image: Purple and blue close up, kind of spiral?

It totally worked to de-stress me.

Some medical updatery under the cut.

( Read more... the short of it: we got the appointment for Thursday )
Will keep those who want to know posted on those developments.

more fabric on the lines

Image: more fabrics on the line (in shadow, apparently, but hopefully you can see the general patterns.)

The other thing I did last night was attend the Lammy's, the Lambda Award Ceremony. They had a Discord and so I actually connected with some folks in the SF/F community, which was nice. I am just going to continue to say that I am often surprised by how much I truly enjoy online events. This one was very "bare-bones," in that they broadcast the actual awards on YouTube and hosted a short-lived Discord. The cool thing was that people came in from all over the world. I hung out in the lobby for a long time watching people come in and there were people from India, Botswana, the UK, and... dozens and dozens of places all across North America. This is the thing, I don't know that the Lammys is usually such an international event? I certainly never bothered to go when I would have had to travel and pay for hotel.

The Nebulas are also this weekend and I'll be attending that... as is something called Cymera, which you may recall, I added a reading to? I have no idea if they accepted it in their Open Mic, but hopefully so. Fun times!

I'm currently attending FutureConSF.

This is the con seemed to spring up right after I complained about how strangely un-international WorldCON felt to me. Obviously, FutureConSF was already in the works, but it was like an answer to everything I'd been wanting. Of course, gave them money and signed up IMMEDIATELY after hearing about it.

I have been to:

Future South & East Asia: What Future is Taking Shape in India, Pakistan, Philippines?
Science Fiction in Translation: A Hidden Treasure to Innovate the Genre
Solarpunk: New Seeds from the Ashes of Cyberpunk
Future East Asia: Techno-traditions in Japan and Korea
Future South America: The Melting Pot of Creativity in Brazil

And I'm really looking forward to tomorrow's panels:

Future China: The Rising Phenomenon of Chinese SF
Future Africa: Visions from Nigeria and Uganda

These are just some of the panels you can listen to, as well. If you're curious about the entire schedule, it's here: https://www.futureconsf.com/schedule

The bonus about how this convention is structures is that if you're looking at the titles of these and thinking, "Damn, I wish I could have gone to XXXX." You STILL CAN. They are all available, free, on YouTube. In fact, just now, when I was making dinner I decided to catch up on the "Solarpunk" panel and it was great. I mean, you can't join in the chats about these panels once their posted or get questions asked, but you don't have to miss the content?

Also I was talking to

quadong (but don't tell him, since it's still coming in the mail) about the ways in which I've found to enjoy virtual experiences. One of them is to find real time/real life friends willing to "go to panels" with me. Keep in mind, I'm extroverted so cons for me were often about hanging out with and meeting people. So, like, this morning, I got up at 6:30 am so that I could connect via video chat with

jiawen and we could watch the "Future East Asia..." panel together. Then, later I was telling a friend in Canada about this con and so she jumped on and watched "Future South America..." with me while we WhatsApp texted back and forth about what we were watching. I mean, it's NOT the same as wandering the halls. Likewise, I realize that panelling is not even always what people sign up for cons FOR, but for me, someone who, in fact, did love the panels best, it's pretty close.

I think the problem is the effort involved to some extent. I was really pleased that

jiawen reached out to ME last night about this morning's panel so we could arrange something. I roped my Canadian friend in, but it was spontaneous... and lucky that she was interested.

"Seeing" other people really does help me consider a virtual con a success.

I am sad that I missed the virtual hangout that the con had organized, a kaffeeklatch, but it looks like they're doing one Sunday, too, so hopefully I can drop by, because cons for me used to be a combination of meeting old friends, panels, and meeting new friends. A zoom with strangers is often the antidote for that last one.

As an aside, I love zooming with strangers. This is very weird and I recognize that anything I'm saying about this should not constitute "advice" because as

quadong reminded me, zoom is also work for a lot of people? It is for me, but in a totally different way... and I seem to be one of the rare individuals out there that actually really feels a certain amount of connection via video chat? I don't find it particularly more or less awkward than in-person communication. Talking to people I don't know is something I really enjoy in-person and so doing it on-line is not all much different.

But, this is one of the few upsides to being an extrovert during the pandemic? I'm used to instigating conversation anyway? So, uh, life finds a way.... as it were, only in my case, conversation finds a way.

I think, too, that one of the things that makes me happiest about virtual cons is the fact that so many of them are insanely affordable. If you don't want to (or can't afford to) contribute to FutureSFCon, you don't have to. It's all out there, for free. Also, this one, in particular, makes me feel like I'm traveling. Listening to people LITERALLY all over the world is AMAZING to me.

It's possible I'm just easily amused.

Picture: New Kitty, Willow, smiling.

Since so many of my friends here have an icon of their black cat, I should probably make this one of mine. It is often so hard to take pictures of black cats, but Willow is turning out to be surprisingly photogenic.

We have discovered that Willow will play fetch. It is massively adorable.

Also, there appears to be sunshine today, a minor miracle. Here is St. Paul, Minnesota, we have been drizzly and overcast for several days in a row. Hopefully, today after I take Shawn in for her physical therapy (she's developed an arthritic thumb), I can drive along the Mississippi River and catch some of the fall colors. When I posted pictures on Facebook a few days ago and I suggested we were close to peak, someone corrected me and said we were at 50%. It just might be that my favorite time is actually not peak. I guess I like it when the yellows, reds, and oranges are contrasted to the few remaining green trees.

leaves along the Mississippi

Picture: gray day, but lovely colors of leaves along the mighty Mississippi (Lake Street Bridge, looking south, for the local folks.)

Tonight, I'm planning on going to the meet-and-greet dinner at Gaylaxicon. I don't have to be back at the con then until late Friday, which is good, because I am still frantically trying to get through my revisions for Unjust Cause. Because so many of these changes are bone deep, I've been having days, like yesterday, where i work ALL DAY and end up with a -1 word count. THAT was frustrating. But productive? I like the story a lot better now. I am sort of dreading today's work, however, because i'm approaching a section of the previous stuff that, even when I wrote it, I remember thinking, "Wow, this is sort of off track," so goddess only knows what I will be able to salvage from that. Ah well. I'm still having fun writing again. Deadlines (and a contract) are good for me.

And, for

pameladean here is a lovely picture of my big orange, Buttercup:

Buttercup, the big orange kitty, being amazingly photogenic

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Day in the Life of an Idiot

Journal of Lyda Morehouse

Entries tagged with conventions

Rehearsals Continue

The Big Day - Gaylaxicon - Saturday*

About to Crash

Should've Invested in a Gaylaxicon Icon

Busy Week

Just on a Roll, so Bear with Me (or Bee with Me, as it Happens)

...of Podcasts and Such

My Minicon Schedule

Where I Will Be This Weekend

CONvergence Write-Up

Virtual WisCON Report 2023

Minicon 56 Report

Virtual Chicon 8 Con Report (Day 2)

Convergence (Day 3 & 4)

Convergence (Day 2)

CONvergence (Day 1)

Virtual Cons, Speculation

Craft De-Stressing and medical updatery

FuturConSF

Starting With the Important Stuff