#which can be very intimidating for asexual and/or sex repulsed individuals | Explore Tumblr Posts and Blogs

backofthebookshelf · 7 years

Text

WisCon Day 3

Sunday, despite being hung over and not going to bed until 4am the night before, I staggered up early enough to catch the end of the 10am panel slot "How Lazy Writing Recreates Oppression." There were some really good thinky panels at that slot, but I knew I wasn't going to be up for anything more than listening to Tempest and Nico and Mark yell about stupid stories and stupid characters, and I was right. It was pretty great though. I did not take notes in this panel, which on reflection is a goddamn shame, but the Twitter hashtag gets a lot of the highlights. (Tempest made Mark blush with her description of the male ejaculation story arc, which alone was worth the price of admission to the entire con.) I needed some vegetables for lunch, so we walked all the way around the square to the remodeled Brocach, which used to be an Irish pub and is now a super-trendy restauraunt that serves a lot of Jaimeson. Food was good, but I can't see going there as often as we used to (even if I were in town). I'd intended to go to the "creating alien sex organs" panel at one, but the general atmosphere in the room beforehand was putting me off just slightly (nothing super offensive, just being a mildly sex-repulsed asexual person means there are some atmospheres I'm not really comfortable in), so I went to a reading instead - "AIs, Wendigos, and other Teenage Worries." Theo Nicole Lorenz read from her YA-novel-in-progress Wendigo Summer, Marianne Kirby read from a story narrated by a ghost who lives in a mall and falls in love with a mannequin (and talked up her Dustbath Revival series, which I then had to go into the dealer's room and purchase), and Naomi Kritzer read from the YA-novel-in-progress followup to her Hugo-award winning story "Cat Pictures, Please," narrated by a teenage girl and by an AI who set up a social network whose price for entry is pictures of cute animals. Because the AI likes cat pictures. Wound up spending more money in the dealer's room, because of course there were many books I was interested in, once I went looking for one, and also Dylan Edwards's feeping creatures are exactly my monster aesthetic (I recommend them to everyone). At 2:30 I went to a panel on Moral Ambiguity in Fiction, which turned out to be the followup to the villains panel I'd been to last year, where we ended up talking about the difference between moral ambiguity and "this person is evil but I'm attracted to them." There was some of that in this panel, too, but also on the difference between a text that is morally ambiguous (like, say, Watchmen, where the ending gives you several options for how to interpret an event but doesn't actually encourage you to lean toward any one of them) and a text that is morally chaotic (where the hero can do whatever he wants because he's the hero, which makes all his actions morally acceptable *coughSGAcough*). There was also some discussion of what kinds of characters are interesting when morally ambiguous (characters who grew up without a moral compass and attempt to build one; characters who do bad things in service of a higher good) and what characters are painted, either by canon or by fanon, as morally ambiguous despite not really deserving a redemption arc (Snape, Loki). (I mean, I might fight you on Loki-in-the-text, but Loki fandom really is the worst sometimes.) Sadly, no one mentioned the next logical step: people whose actions are hardly morally ambiguous but who you have a hard time arguing with anyway (see: The Ballad of Black Tom). Lots of good examples in this panel; check the book list when I get it up. At four I went to another monster panel, which turned out to be a horror panel instead: "When the Monster Isn't the Monster," which despite the panel description turned out to be a lot about how horror works and how it doesn't. Most of what I have written down is an endless list of recommendations, but a lot of the discussion wandered around the general idea of otherness (which is what monsters are about) and ways things get projected onto that and how it's handled. There was a lot of talk about some of the big recent horror movies - The Babadook, It Follows, The Witch - and what exactly their monsters are doing. The most interesting point that was brought up was about universality - while the idea of monsters generally is a universal one, individual monsters are culturally and even personally very specific, which is one reason why American remakes of foreign horror can be so bad. And some stories can't be universalized - Get Out is a movie about the experience of being Black in America, and while it might give white audiences a taste of what that's like, it's not the same thing. (We didn't talk much about Get Out, because the whole panel was white, and I appreciated that. Also, I still haven't seen it, which I need to fix.) After that it was time for dinner and getting ready for the big event! We ran back to Hattie's apartment because she'd accidentally left her dessert ticket there, came back and had Ian's Pizza for dinner, then got all fancy. (Last year I went super-girly to the Dessert Salon, the one semi-formal-if-you-want-to part of WisCon; this year I didn't get to go as butch as I wanted to but I did wear pants and the General Leia vest I'd bought on Friday, which was pretty good). Dessert Salon is always amazing; they have a good pastry chef at the Concourse. Kelly Sue DeConnick gave an amazing speech about taking your place in the pantheon of feminist writers, and about the debt owed by people with privilege to those who have less of it; Amal El-Mohtar gave an amazing speech about being strong enough to be kind, coming together and understanding one another in good faith, and Steven Universe (which I really need to suck it up and watch). The Tiptree award was presented to Anna Marie McLemore for When the Moon Was Ours - and look, the Tiptree ceremony is my absolute favorite award ceremony in all the world. The award is a tiara to wear all weekend, a check, a box of chocolates, and a piece of art inspired by the work (this year a gorgeous glass sculpture), and then we all sing a parody song based on the winning work. "And that's how you present a dignified award," Pat Murphy said when it was all over. It's the best. And then they announced next year's guests of honor, which I have yet to be less than overwhelmingly excited about, but next year it's Tananarive Due!!!!!! and Saladin Ahmed!!!!!! which is incredible, I am so excited, this is going to be amazing. After the celebrations I tried to party again, this time slightly more successful, not least because I've been following Alexandra Erin on twitter for months and had already managed to talk to her on Friday night, so I was much less intimidated. Also, they were doing virgin cocktails, and I was not going to miss a party with virgin cocktails. The party was semi to celebrate the ten-year anniversary of her first major serial, Tales of MU, and mostly to launch her new one, The Secret Sisterhood of Superheroes, featuring realistic elements such as happy queer femme superheroes, and fantasy elements such as competently evil presidents. Everyone read it, it should be great, I got a promotional button with the title of the first chapter, "Only G*sh Can Judge Me." And then I came back to the room and took a shower and went to bed. (Monday and wrap-up thoughts later tonight; hopefully book lists by next Monday.) comments from the wicked king of parody http://ift.tt/2rZetlV via IFTTT

#dreamwidth

3 notes · View notes