Ask my Colonel, for I don't know
I am badly missing the sea at the end of summer. I spent some time this afternoon reading on the front steps, but it wasn't the same. I was reading Dick Francis' Hot Money (1987) and Cat Sebastian's A Gentleman Never Keeps Score (2018), though.
After this year's Arisia and Readercon, I believe I am firmly not a person who was designed for virtual conventions, but I had a really lovely time this weekend. It ended up that two of my program items were pre-recorded, which gave me the ghost-like experience of watching myself while hanging out in the relevant Discord channel. Taking part in the Ig Nobel Dramatic Readings is a highlight of any convention—I especially enjoyed hard-selling the scheme of structured procrastination—and "Children of the Daughter of the Night: Descendants of Tanith Lee" was a blast from start to finish as we fanned over Lee and her identifiable inheritors and the difficulty of tracing the lineage of a writer who for all her influence is still far too much like a secret history than a cladogram. I really would like that tribute anthology edited by![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
handful_ofdust. Gratifyingly, "Grappling with Imperialism's Traumas" blew past the premise in the first round of questions and turned into more of a discussion of the ways in which empires are commonly represented in speculative fiction versus the ways in which they actually function in real life. asakiyume took some notes and I have proposed a sequel panel now that we've done the revolution 101. I desperately missed wandering through the dealer's room and hanging out wherever in the hotel I found people to talk to, but I want those people to be there to talk to in future years, so. Still, it's hard to hug through a screen.
I suspect I will never know what I caught at the start of this month that made me so disablingly ill for almost two weeks straight, but it saw itself out with remarkable melodrama: at the classical wolf-hour of the morning, I spiked a sudden fever, even higher than I had guessed from the chills and the skin-ache and the light-headedness and so on; by the time I woke in the afternoon, it was gone and I felt better already. I thought that sort of thing went out with the nineteenth century. Or at least the early twentieth, pre-penicillin. I am now taking things carefully in case I melodramatically relapse. I am very against coming down with even a different plague.
For Afghanistan, I donated to HIAS. I should call politicians in the morning. I read the letter from the president of Bard College. Papers, papers, the old refrain of borders and visas and governments not caring to get people out, it lost its novelty last century. To this we've come.
After this year's Arisia and Readercon, I believe I am firmly not a person who was designed for virtual conventions, but I had a really lovely time this weekend. It ended up that two of my program items were pre-recorded, which gave me the ghost-like experience of watching myself while hanging out in the relevant Discord channel. Taking part in the Ig Nobel Dramatic Readings is a highlight of any convention—I especially enjoyed hard-selling the scheme of structured procrastination—and "Children of the Daughter of the Night: Descendants of Tanith Lee" was a blast from start to finish as we fanned over Lee and her identifiable inheritors and the difficulty of tracing the lineage of a writer who for all her influence is still far too much like a secret history than a cladogram. I really would like that tribute anthology edited by
handful_ofdust. Gratifyingly, "Grappling with Imperialism's Traumas" blew past the premise in the first round of questions and turned into more of a discussion of the ways in which empires are commonly represented in speculative fiction versus the ways in which they actually function in real life. asakiyume took some notes and I have proposed a sequel panel now that we've done the revolution 101. I desperately missed wandering through the dealer's room and hanging out wherever in the hotel I found people to talk to, but I want those people to be there to talk to in future years, so. Still, it's hard to hug through a screen.I suspect I will never know what I caught at the start of this month that made me so disablingly ill for almost two weeks straight, but it saw itself out with remarkable melodrama: at the classical wolf-hour of the morning, I spiked a sudden fever, even higher than I had guessed from the chills and the skin-ache and the light-headedness and so on; by the time I woke in the afternoon, it was gone and I felt better already. I thought that sort of thing went out with the nineteenth century. Or at least the early twentieth, pre-penicillin. I am now taking things carefully in case I melodramatically relapse. I am very against coming down with even a different plague.
For Afghanistan, I donated to HIAS. I should call politicians in the morning. I read the letter from the president of Bard College. Papers, papers, the old refrain of borders and visas and governments not caring to get people out, it lost its novelty last century. To this we've come.
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Thank you! I'm hoping it stays that way!
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[I could have sworn I had answered this comment hours ago, but it seems DW ate my reply. This will be an imperfect reconstruction.]
All the panelists identified themselves as such. My first choices were Gemma Files, Craig Laurance Gidney, and Storm Constantine, plus the later addition of Ysabeau Wilce; I should also have remembered Vera Nazarian. Other panelists suggested Margo Lanagan, Cassandra Khaw, A.C. Wise, Caitlín R. Kiernan, Poppy Z. Brite (Billy Martin), Kathe Koja, and other writers I am almost certainly forgetting. One of the virtues of a tribute anthology is that I feel it would draw out a range of not the usual suspects and that would be both valuable and fascinating.
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Welcome!
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I had to start with the levity because I am very afraid for AFAB people who can't work, can't go in the street, can't be educated or access their bank accounts. We were an occupying force and that's problematic, but: we left them.
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Or less loquaciously, we left them, we abandoned them to untold pain, and I share your horror.
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That is excellent on your company's part, and this brave person's, and HIAS for organizing this.
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You open the door to the stranger. It is the most important thing.
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Good for your work! I have wanted to punch them for months and this makes a nice change!
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Oh, whew.
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*hugs*
We were an occupying force and that's problematic, but: we left them.
The problem with the graveyards of empires is it isn't only empires that end up buried there.
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*hugs*
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I've been to large number of on-line cons both speculative and gaming, and I'm never seen a vendor area as active as the bookseller channels were. And people definitely mentioned to the damage to their wallets.
The prep work was really impressive. I hope other cons take advantage of it--I'm certainly encouraging Worldcon to leverage this for the hybrid side of the event.
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Good!
While I was volunteering I did encounter two people who were sad that being online really didn't capture what they valued from the con.
It was a mix for me. The panels felt like themselves, even though I missed the presence of an audience in the room; the caliber of the discussion was not at all affected by taking place over Zoom. The thing where you just run into people in a sort of Brownian chain of conversations and eventually it's four in the morning was impossible for me over Discord, one of the many, many social platforms it is not easy or necessarily pleasant for me to interact with. There's no way around that. I know a lot of people who spend a lot of their time very happily there.
I've been to large number of on-line cons both speculative and gaming, and I'm never seen a vendor area as active as the bookseller channels were. And people definitely mentioned to the damage to their wallets.
That is also good to hear. I browse preferentially and I've been cut off from it for months now.
The prep work was really impressive. I hope other cons take advantage of it--I'm certainly encouraging Worldcon to leverage this for the hybrid side of the event.
Readercon did a phenomenal job putting itself together to make this convention possible, especially after skipping last year. Everything people are saying approvingly of them, they deserve.
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That's fine, Sonya, just make me cry in the middle of a weekday.
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*hugs*
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Thank you! We worked HARD. I'd be happy to chat with anyone at Worldcon who wants to know what our back-end planning looked like.
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Thanks for the offer to chat with people from Worldcon. I've shared that in the staff Discord, and will reinforce the value of connecting in a programing meeting this weekend.
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I'm glad you feel better, even if melodrama was necessary to make that happen.
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Mission accomplished!
I'm glad you feel better, even if melodrama was necessary to make that happen.
Thank you. It was one of the weirder ways I have been sick in my life.
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Thank you.
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I re-read those recently! They hold up.
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Three cheers for driving off your illness!
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I'm so glad! Do you spend much time on Discord outside of virtual cons?
Three cheers for driving off your illness!
Thank you! Working on keeping it that way!
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I don't! My few experiences are neutral to leaning toward negative. I've peered in at Scintillation, the Discord space that exists for that convention, and done similar in the Discord space that an author I've enjoyed ran for a while, but I don't have the knack--or maybe I should say the liking--for just hanging out and talking without some topic to talk about. I feel rude if I wander away, but I can hardly stay for hours on end. I realize people do just pop in and out, but I like my popping in and out to be less apparent, I guess.
But with Readercon, it was clear that for any given panel, we-the-audience would be in the space for the panel, talking about things related to the panel, and then we'd disperse.
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We planned it that way very carefully—the year-round Readercon community Discord is a ghost town precisely because it's hard to chat without knowing what to chat about, and we wanted to avoid that during the con. Still working on figuring it out in the community space post-con...
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So noted!
*hugs*