Image: A very unstable LEGO gummie tractor made from a packet picked up at Minicon (GPS room)

My second (and last, as it happens,) day at MInicon was a real mixed bag and I am, in fact, still sorting out a lot of how I feel about it. As I noted in the previous post, most of my panels (4 out of 5) felt no better than 'meh,' with at least two of them sinking to 'is this an unmitigated diaster??? I think this might be a disaster!!' in my book.

But, it's possible that my standards out of whack. And, at least one person in the audience of one of the panels I thought was possibly The BIGGEST trainwreck, actually said that most of what I told her about privately was not at all visible to the audience (which is good!) She had a great time and thought the panel was fun. The problem may just be me.

So, take everything below with a very large heaping of salt.

 
Saturday

My first panel on Saturday wasn't until 11:30 am and so Shawn and I did our usual alliterative errands. We went to the cardborad recycling place, the coffee shop and stopped for cardamom spinners at Brake Bread (yes, spelled like that. They are a drive-up and bicycle delivering--as in, home deliveries by bicycle--bakery, so it's the screeeeeeeech of braking suddenly that they are evoking, along with the pun on breaking bread, of course, I believe.)  But, so I got to have fancy coffee and fancy food before heading off to Bloomington and the convention.

My first panel of the day yesterday was the one I was most concerned about, "The Monkey King Travels West." While I was willing to name names in the previous post, I am going to be a little more circumspect in this post, since the person I had the most issues with will very likely be the one to decide if I'm on paneling again next year. 

I can't even say that the pre-panel chatter started well.

I was, at least, delighted to have Delia I. to my left and Anna W. to my right. ( CW: transphobia )

Because, once we got underway, I was still upset on Phoenix's behalf and on behalf of all the queer folks in the room (including myself) and so I was not really in the mood to try to follow the moderator's questions, some of which seemed a bit rambling and all over the place. Like, was this about the legendary figure of the Monkey King or was it about the cross-pollenation between Eastern media and Western and vice versa? The answer seemed to be [cue: meme] "Both! Why not both?"Which might have worked if the moderator had a better hypothesis, you know? Instead it was, as I said, disjointed at best and, of course, I was struggling to engage.  This moderator, too, has a tendency to hog the microphone, which is generally not considered best practices.

Let's just say I was happy when it was over and I fled.

Delia I. was hot on my heels. Delia had heard that there was a potato/taco bar in the GPS room happing RIGHT NOW, and so, having connected up with naomikritzer who was waiting for me outside the programming area, we all headed for much needed food and debriefing. We spent a huge amount of time in the GPS room, actually, talking to the various folks there and trying to build gummy LEGO vehicles from the packets they had available. Despite the picture above, mine was not successful in the room. We had all postulated that the gummies might work better if they were colder/stiffer, and that proved to be true of the leftover pack I took away with me--my fingers had been all over it, trying to build something (so, OF COURSE, I  had to take it home!) 

I ran off around 1 pm to meet up with one of my new pen pals, Roger P., who is actually in a gaming group with caffeine , who is someone else I had a tremendous amount of fun with spending time with at con (and getting to see pictures of the newest grandbaby!) Roger was not at con, so we met at a nearby (walkable) Caribou. Roger turned out to be just my sort, so we probably chatted for an hour or more? He brought a book that he wanted me to sign and so I did that. It was a nice break to get OUT of the con, too.

Surprisingly, Naomi was just where I left her so we continued to hang out there for much of the afternoon. We'd been thinking about going out to get Szechuan at a place Naomi loves and, in retrospect, I wish we had. We ended up having a great time in the hotel restraunt continuing our conversation with Aaron V G, but the service and the food were... iffy. Naomi and I both ordered the butternut squash ravioli, and this is what we got:



Image: Mediocre food masquerading as froo-froo.

The dark droozle of stuff was, I think, supposed to be balsamic something or other, but, insted, tasted like something WAY too sweet. It was edible, but, honestly, only barely. We also lost our server for a long time (I did not even see her flitting about taking care of other people in the restaurant) and I had to flag down another server (who actually turned out to be the manager) and see if we could order more food, etc., etc. I mean, at least this I understand. The hotel probably had a lot of trouble getting people who wanted to work on the Saturday before Easter Sunday. And, I mean, no harm, really. Thank goodness I had HOURS before I needed to be at my 7 pm panel.

Even though I would have missed the company, I do think the two of us would have been better off at Szechuan. 

At some point in here, I also wandered the Dealer's Room and happened to stumble across the author of O Human Star, Blue Delliquanti. jiawen recommended this web comic to me and it is AMAZING (and made me cry the good tears.) I had an absolute fucking fan squee freak out to actually meet Blue in-person. I may have said something stupid like, "Wait, wait, YOU wrote THIS??" which, I mean, why else would someone be sitting behind a display of the graphic novel set? Anyway, I gushed pretty incoherently at Blue about their art and stories and then I absolutely blew the budget I was set by buying all three volumes of O Human Star and had them sign them. 

I was wearing my ConFABulous t-shirt and so Blue mentioned that they thought they might like to attend that con sometime, and so I gave them my pitch for Gaylaxicon which is what ConFABulous will be THIS year. I need to remember to follow-up today and make sure to have John T. or Don K. reach out to them.

I am sure I am missing a bunch of other stuff that happened in here, but now we move on to Disaster #2, "The Pitfalls and Benefits of Writing Humor."

We were down a moderator because the person who was supposed to take that role was, I believe, sick or otherwise unable to come to con. I was a little thrown at the beginning of the panel when Wesley suggested that the audience boo the missing panelist, but okay. We all joked that we should take turns moderating and so Wesley assigned himself the role of "the one who reads the panel description," and I assigned myself the role of "the person who suggests we all introduce ourselves and picks who we start with." This was mostly all fine (booing aside,) and then... somehow the Monkey King came to haunt me again.

Again I am going to be a little more circumspect about the panelist I am about to discuss because she is actually a very good friend of mine, who I think just misstepped BADLY. 

But, y'all, it was bad.

( CW: micro-agressions and racism )

I have NO IDEA what my friend says to Wesley or how he takes it, because I am intercepting Wesley's liason to let him know that Wesley might need a STIFF DRINK after this panel and this would be why.

I had two more panels to go before I could go home

Again, however, I asked a friend of mine who was in the audience how this whole scene played out to her, and I think we were really lucky that the microphones in that room were kind of crap and I'm not sure how sure how much of it was heard by anyone but the panelists and the first few rows. My friend was seated in the middle and said she tuned out the whole Monkey King thing because she had no interest in any of that and so had no idea anything had really happened. 

After the debacle that was the Humor panel, I flagged down one of my fellow panelists, Ozgur, for the next one ("The Restaurant at the End of the Book," for which I am the moderator) and asked him if he would be willing to be a stealth co-moderator, There is one panelist that could be a problem, and I had seen that person at the bar, so 50/50 they were sober. So, I said to Ozgur that if I seem to be floundering to please jump in and help me wrestle the topic back to plumb. He agreed.

Thus armed, I went into the next one.

Turns out? This was the best panel I was on all weekend. The panelist I was worried about? A perfect addtion to the panel, extremely lively in all the right ways. We stayed on topic with only a few, very natural diversions into related topics, like the history of certain foods, etc. I think panelists were happy because I asked those that created recipes for their books to share them, and at the end, I made sure that anyone who had things they wanted to plug had the opportunity to do so. Ozgur never had to rescue me, and, more importantly, IT WAS FUN.

My last panel was "Who is Voting for Team Rocket?" and our moderator decided to take that literally and had a fun little part at the end where we voted on various villains in various catagories and whoever suggested them won a small figurine that she had picked up at the dollar store. This panel did not pop, but it also did not fail, so it slotted in nicely to the 'it was okay' set of panels. 

What a wild damn ride.

This is not my usual experience at Minicon at all. I am blaming the Monkey King, because clearly I have displeased him with my lack of knowledge. Hopefully a penance of several chapters of A Journey to the West will put my life's vibe back in order.

 
Image: Sign saying: (trans) Girls Just Wanna Have Fun

This morning, in my inbox, was a notification from "Women's March Minnesota" reminding me to generally be political. Among their various suggestions was a rally TODAY at the State Capitol at 2 pm to protest HF12, which is a piece of legislation aimed at trying to restrict trans women and girls from participating in sports in Minnesota. OutFront MN organized it to happen in front of the House Chambers as they were going into deliberation (we started at 2 pm, the legislature started their talks at 3:30 pm). I actually couldn't stay for very long as I had to pick Shawn up from work just down the street at the History Center. But I showed up and hung out as long as I could. It was delightful to watch people from all over show up, unfurl trans flags, rainbow flags, and nonbinary flags. 

At least one (obvious and fursuit wearing) person from the furry community showed up and I could not have been more pleased. I fucking LOVE Minnesotans.

There was an absolutely DISTURBING number of heavily armored, armed State Troopers at the Captiol, however. I presume they were there for us, because the folks protesting right before we were where homeless foster kids who were trying to save their program's funding and (sadly) there weren't nearly as many of thos folks.

At any rate, the police presence seemed like overkill. 

Still, for a Monday afternoon, I thought it was an amazing showing.  Here's a shot that gives you a small sense of the crowd. We filled the second floor of the rotunda and spilled down into the first floor. 



Image: Doesn't look nearly as impressive as it was. Most of the signs say "Let Kids Play" (in trans flag colors)

I don't know what good it will do, but I do think the MN Legislature now knows we will turn out in force when they threaten trans folks. There was not a single MAGA hat in the crowd. Hopefully, soon, we will get our majority back (in Minnesota) and we can block crap like this from even being discussed.

But, until then, we FIGHT.

Lindsey Flicker (Facebook) caught a picture of me "in action" at the #WeWontBeErasedMN day of solidarity on Sunday afternoon. The other side of my sign read "Trans Ally"

I can't tell you how powerful this day of visibility was, even for me, who has zero reason to feel particularly validated by all the trans flags and the people who honked and waved or flashed us the peace sign. I loved the idea of it the moment I read what the plan was, which was for people not to march, but to stand shoulder to shoulder and to see if we could span the distance between the approximate heart of Minneapolis (Chicago & Lake) to the "Peace Bridge" (which is the River Road & Lake/Marshall Avenue) into Saint Paul. From their webpage: "Trans folks & allies, does anyone else just want to stand out in public with each other, in a never ending line and be seen? Not a protest, per se but a Trans visibility event."

What still makes me tear up a little? We did it.

To span that distance--approximately six miles--means that literally THOUSANDS of people must have been lining the streets.

On Sunday morning, I got up early to go to Walgreen's to get my 'Sunday Go to Protest" supplies. I was happy that they had blue and pink sharpies, since those are the colors of the trans flag.  The morning looked like it might be rainy, so I made sure to coat my sign in packing tape. But, by the time I left to go meet some friends at the Blue Moon Cafe, the sun was so bright that I grabbed my sunglasses.  I had coffee with Anna D., and two other people I only knew tangentially, Marion E. and Patricia Z.  Anna wanted to stand near the deaf interpreter site, which was actually planned to be close to the coffee shop, so Marion and I stopped where there was a gap that needed filling and Anna and Patricia continued on.  We stood there for an hour as people filled in and spread, and, like I said, we didn't _do_ anything--no chants, no singing (although apparently, there were spots assigned for the folks that wanted to sing AND apparently a band showed up)--but it felt weirdly amazing to wave and be waved at... maybe because there's so damn much hate in the world, the simple act of being smiled at felt astoundingly up-lifting.

But, like I said, this wasn't FOR me. It was for the kids who were standing next to me holding a trans flag with white knuckles because their LIVES depended on it, it was for my friend's friend who I stood beside who is genderqueer. It was for my friends and my cousin and for everyone who really, really needed to hear that people SEE them and LOVE them. 

The signs were all amazing, too. If you need cheering up, you should go to the website and just scroll down the "discussion" section.