Readercon part 2 of 2: Panel notes
Jul. 17th, 2016 07:05 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
bironic
Continued from here (personal experience at the con)
In chronological order:
SF in the Classical Tradition - John Crowley, Haris Durrani, Ada Palmer, Catherynne M. Valente, Jo Walton
Whatever your definition of science fiction, there's no disputing that there were centuries of proto-science fiction published before the modern stuff began appearing. More than 1600 years before Mary Shelley wrote Frankenstein, Lucian of Samosata wrote The True History, featuring perhaps the first fictional trip to the moon, the first fictional trip into outer space, and the first fictional space opera. Cicero, in 51 B.C.E. published "The Dream of Scipio," in which the narrator and his grandfather, Scipio Africanus, take an astral journey through the solar system. Greek mythology, plays, and tragedies have science fictional elements in them as well. Our panelists will discuss the fantastical and science fictional in the classical (Greek and Roman) tradition.
Interesting opener to the weekend, although I would have preferred more examples of speculative stories from the Classical era. Discussion kept returning to debates about what defines science fiction, fantasy, science, fiction and reality; could you have "science fiction" before science existed; is something SF if it extrapolates on what was known and believed at the time; etc. Wish someone had argued that although you could call early works precursors to today's SF/F, you could as easily say that today's genres are simply new and perhaps too-strict labels for the kinds of speculative or fantastic stories people have told for thousands of years. Appreciated Haris Durrani reminding everyone on multiple occasions that there are non-Western examples and points of view that complicate the analyses and enrich the canon.
- Is John Carter/Burroughs SF? "Masculine energies" brought him to Mars
- Hephaestus's robots ~ AI or religion
- Ibn Sina: intellectual idea = real, what is science, what does it mean now/what did it mean historically
- Lucretius' universe-bubbles with inhabited earths in the centers
- Voltaire's aliens from Saturn
- Don Quixote island cultures seen in derivative works developed fanfic genre conventions, vs. tropes seen in Greek visions of Ethiopia
- "The Chemical Wedding of Christian Rosenkreutz"
- "When science became Western"—Darwinism via missionaries (?)
- What if something in a story functions like science or is structurally similar to science or has the same sensibility?
- "The Golden Ass"—magic functionally same as science, and she thinks about potions in a scientific way. Then --> fantasy. Whereas in "Satyricon," fantasy --> SF. Recipe included for virility-restoring dildo. "Hard SF," LOL/groan. --Cat Valente
- Golden Age SF isn't exactly scientific, but believe science has big effects, changes society, scientists advance knowledge; spirit of Bacon though erroneous facts
- Allegories of Iliad/Homer de-metaphored the gods. Iliad isn't fantasy… to the ancient Greeks. It was history, religion.
- Alchemical secretions from angels that Lucretius was describing. Is that SF? Fanfic? Exegesis?
- Lost medieval text of journey to the stars, Ibn Sina+.
- Our brains stitch things together from our eyes: we see a fiction through science.
The Life and Times of Mary Sue - Gillian Daniels, Gemma Files, Ben Francisco, Barbara Krasnoff, Natalie Luhrs
New Republic senior editor Jeet Heer wrote, in a short Twitter essay about Mary Sues, "The popularity of the term 'Mary Sue' really says everything you need to know about sexism in fandom/nerdom." Instead of unpacking the concept of Mary Sue, we'd like to zero in on the troubled history of this term, why it's troubled, and how better to talk about "self-insertion" in fiction without the sexism.
Panel fail, alas. Did not, as the description promised, zero in on the sexism of the term and concept. Discussion kept being pulled down by moderator Krasnoff's insistence on saying things like "So much of fanfiction is terrible, I don't see why people focus on the Mary Sue as a point of criticism" (paraphrase from memory) and by audience remarks like "I don't think 'Mary Sue' is a gendered term." Gillian Daniels and Gemma Files did their best to defend fanfic and keep things on topic, and they or others did raise points such as that plenty of male characters would be called Mary Sues if they were women, but by the halfway mark, at 9:30 p.m., I'd had enough and bailed. Wish it had been a smaller group with more audience input. Well, really I wish it had done what it said on the tin; as it was, it lagged far behind DW/LJ fannish analyses. Though it's possible it got better in the second half.
To my unending amusement, Qvothe from The Name of the Wind was the fourth male Mary Sue mentioned, after Lazarus someone, Batman and James Bond.
Did jot down some notes:
- In some ways, definition of Mary Sue = protagonist. They deform narratives.
- Policing Mary Sues = erasing women from narrative. They can't be special.
- Grr: "Mary Sue is what kids do after make-believe." "Do you want to BE them? Beginning of empathy."
- Female readers [& readers of color] have to learn putting yourself into somebody different. [White] men don't have to.
- What makes a female character TOO something?
- Why are you telling women telling stories for fun not to be so self-indulgent?
- Mary Sues have become second-person "you" in fic nowadays
- Gaming is self-insert. But I guess that's seen as fine because it's mostly guys. Except it's not mostly guys.
- "The basis of all creative impulse is self-insertion"
- I'M driving the narrative. Teen girls need power over something in their lives.
- Panelist 1: Mary Sues don't have enough conflict? Panelist 2: Eh. People writing representationally write the kinds of conflicts they experience IRL.
- Ensign Mary Sues already existed in TOS
- 'We're critiquing the wrong things about Mary Sues. We should be critiquing story, characterization, plot'
Why Women Become Protagonists - Gwenda Bond, Lisa Cohen, Rosemary Kirstein, Hillary Monahan, Navah Wolfe
In a 2015 essay about portrayals of female protagonists in crime fiction, Sara Paretsky writes, "Detectives like V.I. came to life in a time of bravado, when my peers and I... wrote out of a kind of cockiness: we're doing a job because we want it, we like the work, no one can stop us. Today, the female hero often has been brutally assaulted... or suffered some other form of serious trauma. It's as if the only acceptable reason for a woman to embrace the investigative life is to recover from damage, or get revenge for it—not because she takes pleasure in the work, and comes to it as a free spirit." Let's explore the reasons that female protagonists decide to protag, and discuss the many ways to motivate them other than assault and trauma.
The discussion did center on female protagonists and why they're great, but didn't get much into alternative motivations. Main point of note was a young black woman in the audience who spoke about the importance of not forgetting intersectionality; pointed out that there are different expectations, physiques and stereotypes for black vs. white female characters (& women IRL), that we're seeing more personality traits and body types in pop culture women but they're still following white templates; expressed disappointment that the con put seemingly all white women on the panel [though one panelist responded that she's biracial].
Other notes:
- Early inspiration: Meg Murray.
- Hate the "awesome, complex woman supplementing the mediocre guy." The best screwball comedies of the 30s & 40s are awesome guys stepping up to support mediocre chosen ladies.
- Women can be surly BEFORE assault. Aftereffects are different from what you tend to see in fiction. Hyperaware of men in elevators, when men in rooms outnumber women…
- Strong != pants, emotionless, ninja.
- "Mean girl" label instantly dehumanizes. F/f misogyny. There's always a story behind that behavior.
- Reader reactions to female characters: condemning them for typical male behavior
- <3 Jessica Jones. Flawed, unapologetic, human. Yes, raped, but aftermath core part of her, and focused on. Assault itself not shown/objectivized/exploited.
- If you're exploring reasons and repercussions well, you can use almost any motivational device. :( Men apparently don't need it.
- Leslie Knope, post-season one
- Dreamhunter Duet - Elizabeth Knox. Shadowshaper- DJ Older. Black Iris, Cam Girl - Leah Raeder.
**Book of Esther – verbs shift from passive to active when Esther becomes empowered to do something about Haman
- Fierceness/strength, mental and physical, not opposite of tenderness, domesticity
- Obligatory discussion of increasingly problematic Whedon heroines
- When does a character become a protagonist? Take control of narrative. Make choice(s). Not refuse Campbellian call.
Cozy Dystopias -Gili Bar-Hillel, Bart Leib, Shariann Lewitt, Kenneth Schneyer, Sabrina Vourvoulias
When we think of the world of Harry Potter, what comes to mind first—the magic and childish delights of Hogwarts, with its cozy dormitories and feasts and flying lessons, or its numerous, creeping dystopian elements (even discounting Voldemort!), from the enslaved house elves to Umbridge to the Dementors, which are, frankly, the tools of a fascist state? Can we make an argument that HP is actually more like a dystopia than a fantasy? Even if we're half joking, there's still an interesting discussion here: how do these two sides of the wizarding world play off each other, and how do they compare with other dystopian YA? Maybe we need a new subgenre: Cozy Dystopia.
(I'd been looking forward to seeing Gili Bar-Hillel again, who translated the Harry Potter books into Hebrew, after meeting her years ago at an HP aca-con, but the programming must have changed. Oh, well.)
(This would have been a great panel to live-tweet, but reception on my phone was terrible, and no one at the information desk knew the wifi password.)
- IMO you can't write just one genre
- What is a dystopia? Lewitt: (1) oppressive official/government system, (2) extreme class/race/ethic divisions; need underclass. Vourvoulias: (3) and it's still functional.
- Is postapocalypse dystopia?
**Some people are living in a dystopia right now
- Not everyone sees X as dystopia or utopia, within or outside the narrative
- To what extent is HP a dystopia?
- WWII elements
- Dementors as extrajudicial killings
- Boarding school inherently sadistic, esp for Muggleborns; don't like House competitions
- House Elf bondage
- Ministry like oppressive state, restrictive, limited if any elections, odd judicial process
- Harry doesn't become an activist like Hermione because the Wizarding World/Hogwarts is his dream come true? He benefits from it, is loved/celebrated there, is privileged/wealthy, has no backup?
- You can insert dystopia anywhere, in any genre. At same time, SF/F ripe for dystopia bc they're about power and worries about the future and experimental societies and curious about histories.
- Using power available to them to confront power oppressing them.
- Why can't dystopias be cozy? WALL-E. Happy endings. But does there need to be a distinction/subgenre? Dystopias are cozy for SOMEBODY. POV character & tone matter. All the things we label as cozy or familiar also happen in dystopias. You're eased in to the awfulness. POV of protected person often ~ savior complex.
- "The Ones Who Walk From Omelas," Logan's Run, Brian Aldiss' "cozy catastrophe," Doctorow's "Down and Out in the Magic Kingdom," "The Farthest Shore"
- YA dystopias are attractive: empower youth to take action if they see something wrong. Depict adults as bumbling, ineffectual (like a lot of YA?). Audience [I think Haris Durrani]: very Anglo structure, wish fulfillment of independence from elders and culture.
- Immortality gives rise to dystopias: hedonism and malaise. Voldemort creates dystopia amidst/because he's seeking immortality.
Robots as Proxies - Ted Chiang, Josh Jasper, Jim Kelly, Terence Taylor, Jo Walton
In much of science fiction, robots are thinking beings designed and programmed to be servitors. The tension in that relationship has an unavoidable parallel to slavery, so when we talk about robot uprisings, we're talking about slave revolts. From the throw-away line about the Butlerrian Jihad in the original Dune books to Asimov's laws of robotics and the story of the Centennial Man, to the Terminator, we have views of slaves who decide not to be slaves. What are some of the narratives we create for these slave analogs, and what does it mean for us to be reading them both critically and uncritically?
Great panel! Did what it promised to do. Cell phone reception lasted long enough to live-tweet some of the best insights and questions.
My favorite was learning—or possibly relearning, heh—that "robot" comes from the Czech robota, "forced labor." Jo Walton told the story of a friend who attended a Czech seder in which the Haggadah literally said, "When we were robots in Egypt," which inspired Walton to write a poem of the same title (hat tip tokatenepveu for the link). ♥
Notes:
- Moderator: Reading Ta-Nehisi Coates + robot fiction = this panel
- Most people are not aware of what they're doing when they write robot uprisings. [White man's] fear of enslavement/reversal is there, but not often/always conscious. Also parents' fear of children evolving beyond them.
- Acknowledgement that not every robot is a slave metaphor
- Whether robot is slave hinges on: at what point does an AI become not less than human?
- Centennial Man back-pat: "We let them have sex with our women!"
- Asimov's (?) robots PROGRAMMED to be happy as slaves – implied they wouldn't be happy otherwise. If we don't build in laws, they'll be running this panel in 50 years, ha.
- Choice, free will. Data not a slave. Slavery when robot sees other options and blocked from pursuing.
- HAL sees humans as interfering with ability to do his job.
- Robots never seem to have emotions, families, loved ones, networks. With exceptions: Data, AI from "Her" [ed: I disagree]
- Why would we program emotions into robots? To love us back? [ed: Panelists need to read more Ancillary Justice, etc. to understand the value of emotion in an AI]
- Slavery = business model. Adding consciousness ruins plan. If you need intelligence, humans are cheaper.
- White people want to believe the slaves love their service. But they can't say no.
- Blade Runner droids want life. At least they get opportunities to philosophically discuss their angst. :)
- The next AI villain should come from inside a sophisticated game
End of the World and After: from Mary Shelley to J.G. Ballard, Russell Hoban, and Beyond - Chris Brown, Jack Haringa, Faye Ringel, Henry Wessells, Gary K. Wolfe
Modern sf stories of the end of the world often mask romantic fantasies of abundance and dominion, usually to the benefit of one or a few privileged protagonists who survive the disaster—Brian Aldiss's "cozy catastrophe." Sometimes the vision is grounded in nihilistic misanthropy—like the scientist in Cixin Liu's The Three-Body Problem, who initiates extraterrestrial first contact in an effort to lure aliens to exterminate what she considers an irredeemable human race. Other apocalypses, from early examples like Mary Shelley's The Last Man to more recent work like Cormac McCarthy's The Road and even Mad Max Fury Road, explore even bleaker scenarios. Could a study of comparative apocalypses yield ideas for better utopias?
A largely forgettable panel, I think. Here's what I wrote down:
- JG Ballard's Drowned World, Flood From Nowhere (?), Vermilion Sand, Drought; The Purple Plow; Poison Belt; Earth Strikes Back & Loosed Upon the World; Lepis (giant rabbits). Richard Jeffries, After London & The Last Man. The End of the World As We Know It. Tim Levin, White, + another with nanobots. Who Fears Death.
- It's hard to keep up. Our own world is in the midst of apocalypse, so my ingestion of it has diminished.
- I didn't think I'd see 50 or the world would see 2001
- Apocalypse feels real when we lose someone we love deeply. The personal within the larger apocalypse. Alternately, death of loved ones = metaphorical end of the world, then turned literal. Mary Shelley.
- The ride down. The world after.
- "If you're a serf or have any kind of conscience…"
- Cixin Liu and dystopia as our own history
- NYT article about post-Arab Spring story. Calcutta Chromosome, Kobo Abe, Satanic Verses.
- The "original apocalypse," Noah's flood, = punishment. Or test (Job). The Beach has same implication.
- Resurgence of angel-related stories. Good Omens, The Prophecy, etc. On verge of apocalypse, YOU can prevent. Paradise Lost --> House of Shattered Winds.
- Galapagos: utopia but not for humans
- Cat's Cradle: no one survives
- Local apocalypses: Maldives, Marshall Islands. Sudan, Syria
- Grim view: survival = utopia
- Erasure of the degenerate other vs. life is to be saved in any form
Bad Influences II - Suzy McKee Charnas, Ellen Datlow, Lara Donnelly, Maria Dahvana Headley,Mikki Kendall, Kelly Link, Livia Llewellyn, Vandana Singh
Back by popular demand! This female writer and editor roundtable discussion will focus on the non-genre, possibly "inappropriate" readings of our formative years that contributed to our current careers in the feminist fantastical universe. Teenage obsessions with Charles Bukowski, Henry Miller, Herman Hesse, Salvador Dalí, and Vladimir Nabokov often led us to people like Angela Carter and Claude Cahun. What do we keep of those first artistic obsessions, and what do we critique? Which of our early influencers helped make us into the artists we are today—and which ones make us shake our heads in bewilderment?
Half on topic and half digressions, but all entertaining. Lively group of panelists discussed early influences and the mess of misogyny, external and internalized, that informed their reading and writing choices at various points in their lives.
- As a child, looked around at family and said, 'I don't like all this women's stuff I see around me.' Read the boys lit. Sexist. Later, when wrote first book, editor had to point out there were no female characters.
- My categories for this panel: Bad girls, bad boys, no girls, manly men, trash
- "Bad influences" are good for my horror and dark fantasy and f-ed up erotica
- [Many amusing stories about encountering Valley of the Horses] This is what books are about?! (overblown sex) At 12, they feel very informational.
- Rabbit, Run/series: Men feeling important and sad, and sometimes important and sad at the same time. I consider them boring and trash.
- Girls going out trying to have adventures got punished.
- RL women DID get "punished" for "bad" behavior: they ended up alone with kids, or alone without kids
- Girls and horses. Control and love.
- Riding the bus is way better for describing women than looking at magazines
200 Years of Frankenstein - Don D'Ammassa, Theodora Goss, Jack Haringa, Kathryn Morrow, Faye Ringel
2016 is the 200th anniversary of Mary Shelley's Frankenstein, considered by many critics and scholars to be the first science fiction novel. It is also in many ways the first modern horror novel, being a radical break from the traditional Gothic horror novels so popular at the time. What are the descendants of Frankenstein? How much of an effect has Shelley's novel had on the genres of horror and science fiction? Does the novel still have any relevance or usefulness today besides its historical interest? Will the readers of 2016 still enjoy it?
I'd been looking forward to this panel, especially for the potential recommendations for modern interpretations of the Frankenstein template I hadn't heard of. Unfortunately, most of the time was taken up with analysis of the text itself and discussion of its place in literary history and with picking at the statements made in the panel description. Even though many of the critiques were valid—why do we ask whether Mary Shelley/Frankenstein is still valid when we don't ask the same of Bram Stoker/Dracula, for instance—several were tiresome, like complaining about "kids today" and their lack of understanding or appreciation of classic literature. And somehow it was a surprise to the panelists to consider that one of the book's themes was that male-only creation will go wrong?! Oh, and there was a literal "Um, actually" dude in the audience. Well: even though I hadn't signed up for an English seminar, I did enjoy the throwback to college, and I've done an okay job myself of finding Frankenstein adaptations to enjoy anyway.
- Goss' forthcoming book about female versions of Gothic monsters (!)
- Rationalism vs romanticism. Attention to consequences of science/creation. Exploration/unknown as metaphor for the internal.
- Colossus
- "We're all ontological Shelleys in SF"
- Major Gothic theme continued here: implosion of the family through discovery of forbidden knowledge
- Parallel evolution to Golem, but panelist convinced not an inspiration. Monster made from bodies, not clay. Victor's role models were alchemists, not cabalists. No Jews around that geographical area (?), and most Golem tales today came from late 19th century.
- Mythological, heretical, bad parenting.
- Direct line from Paradise Lost. French Revolution?
- Movie characterization and plot stem from v early pirated theatrical version that M Shelley saw
- Panelist thinks F influenced modern tortured serial killer: I was good, encounters with people made me a killer, I have to do it, I don't enjoy it
- Shelley influenced by Byron/Percy's Greek sympathies? -->anti-Turk/Orientalist stereotypes. "Yellow peril" implication at the time of yellow-skinned villain with streaming black hair. Fear of monsters reproducing to new race.
- Q: Why not make the bride sterile? A: What did they know about fertility at the time?
**Remember Victor is an undergrad. He's not even very good at surgery. Elizabeth would have sewn it better!
- "Kill Byron if you want a perfect man."
- Q: To be hard SF, should have described the monster-making process in more detail. A: Gothic tradition: If you explain/describe it, it's not scary.
- Story proposal: "Mary Shelley goes to Clarion"
Sorting Taxonomies - John Benson, Greer Gilman, Kate Nepveu, Peter Straub, Jacob Weisman
Why do we group our fictions by genre first instead of other possible taxonomies? For instance:--By relationship: what kind of relationship appears in this fiction, and how much is it foregrounded?--By level of violence: violent, nonviolent or anti-violent?--By prose: ornate, simple, vivid, inventive?--By paradigm: is this fiction centred on people, ideas, or action? Those are a few possible ways a reader might choose between works, depending on what they want to read--all of which might include any combination of genres. Our panelists will discuss ways they choose what to read, and give some comparisons of like works from disparate genres.
Overall engaging conversation about different ways people think about story types beyond bookstore categories, give or take a few frustrating moments. I enjoyed trying to MBTI-type people based on how they categorize books, such as by figurative Pantone color. Nepveu did some of the most active panel moderating I saw all weekend. However, that didn't stop Straub from advertising his ignorance when Nepveu asked people not to assume anyone's gender and he kept going, "Huh. Huh!" like it was new to him. Nepveu won me over for good when the discussion turned to the difficulty of finding books based on unconventional features like "competence" and "found family" or "feels dark blue" and she said, "Ask me later how fanfic deals with this." Which is partly why I was so pleased to learn that we were having lunch right after.
Misc. notes:
- As an anthology editor, taxonomy is where we live
- I choose what I want to read next by feeling/mood, voice, what the author/character pulls out of the universe to notice. Is it a watercolor? Prose style, content.
- Interconnectivity of writers, who they say their influencers are. Junot Diaz cites Octavia Butler.
- You can't always read on the heights like that – CS Lewis' stories of longing and reach, being surprised by joy
- Is this going to keep me up late? (Could be good or bad) Make me angry?
- Looking for new writers in recent issues of [magazine], what makes the stories special, how would I group them, what do they say about their era. Small group, premise-->anthology, often evolves so original group doesn't end up in final collection.
- Authors you like who blurb other books can help you find what you might like. Also publishers give clues, including physical cues on the books themselves. Librarians study appeal factors. Some libraries subscribe to "Novelist."
And that's it! Overall a good way to have spent the weekend. Would go back, but would do more work ahead of time re: which panelists would be better or worse to hear and which authors do good readings. Heard I'd missed a good time with Max Gladstone this year. I also learned I'll probably be happier avoiding panels on topics that fandom discusses in depth, because they're likely to feel superficial and frustrating.
In chronological order:
SF in the Classical Tradition - John Crowley, Haris Durrani, Ada Palmer, Catherynne M. Valente, Jo Walton
Whatever your definition of science fiction, there's no disputing that there were centuries of proto-science fiction published before the modern stuff began appearing. More than 1600 years before Mary Shelley wrote Frankenstein, Lucian of Samosata wrote The True History, featuring perhaps the first fictional trip to the moon, the first fictional trip into outer space, and the first fictional space opera. Cicero, in 51 B.C.E. published "The Dream of Scipio," in which the narrator and his grandfather, Scipio Africanus, take an astral journey through the solar system. Greek mythology, plays, and tragedies have science fictional elements in them as well. Our panelists will discuss the fantastical and science fictional in the classical (Greek and Roman) tradition.
Interesting opener to the weekend, although I would have preferred more examples of speculative stories from the Classical era. Discussion kept returning to debates about what defines science fiction, fantasy, science, fiction and reality; could you have "science fiction" before science existed; is something SF if it extrapolates on what was known and believed at the time; etc. Wish someone had argued that although you could call early works precursors to today's SF/F, you could as easily say that today's genres are simply new and perhaps too-strict labels for the kinds of speculative or fantastic stories people have told for thousands of years. Appreciated Haris Durrani reminding everyone on multiple occasions that there are non-Western examples and points of view that complicate the analyses and enrich the canon.
- Is John Carter/Burroughs SF? "Masculine energies" brought him to Mars
- Hephaestus's robots ~ AI or religion
- Ibn Sina: intellectual idea = real, what is science, what does it mean now/what did it mean historically
- Lucretius' universe-bubbles with inhabited earths in the centers
- Voltaire's aliens from Saturn
- Don Quixote island cultures seen in derivative works developed fanfic genre conventions, vs. tropes seen in Greek visions of Ethiopia
- "The Chemical Wedding of Christian Rosenkreutz"
- "When science became Western"—Darwinism via missionaries (?)
- What if something in a story functions like science or is structurally similar to science or has the same sensibility?
- "The Golden Ass"—magic functionally same as science, and she thinks about potions in a scientific way. Then --> fantasy. Whereas in "Satyricon," fantasy --> SF. Recipe included for virility-restoring dildo. "Hard SF," LOL/groan. --Cat Valente
- Golden Age SF isn't exactly scientific, but believe science has big effects, changes society, scientists advance knowledge; spirit of Bacon though erroneous facts
- Allegories of Iliad/Homer de-metaphored the gods. Iliad isn't fantasy… to the ancient Greeks. It was history, religion.
- Alchemical secretions from angels that Lucretius was describing. Is that SF? Fanfic? Exegesis?
- Lost medieval text of journey to the stars, Ibn Sina+.
- Our brains stitch things together from our eyes: we see a fiction through science.
The Life and Times of Mary Sue - Gillian Daniels, Gemma Files, Ben Francisco, Barbara Krasnoff, Natalie Luhrs
New Republic senior editor Jeet Heer wrote, in a short Twitter essay about Mary Sues, "The popularity of the term 'Mary Sue' really says everything you need to know about sexism in fandom/nerdom." Instead of unpacking the concept of Mary Sue, we'd like to zero in on the troubled history of this term, why it's troubled, and how better to talk about "self-insertion" in fiction without the sexism.
Panel fail, alas. Did not, as the description promised, zero in on the sexism of the term and concept. Discussion kept being pulled down by moderator Krasnoff's insistence on saying things like "So much of fanfiction is terrible, I don't see why people focus on the Mary Sue as a point of criticism" (paraphrase from memory) and by audience remarks like "I don't think 'Mary Sue' is a gendered term." Gillian Daniels and Gemma Files did their best to defend fanfic and keep things on topic, and they or others did raise points such as that plenty of male characters would be called Mary Sues if they were women, but by the halfway mark, at 9:30 p.m., I'd had enough and bailed. Wish it had been a smaller group with more audience input. Well, really I wish it had done what it said on the tin; as it was, it lagged far behind DW/LJ fannish analyses. Though it's possible it got better in the second half.
To my unending amusement, Qvothe from The Name of the Wind was the fourth male Mary Sue mentioned, after Lazarus someone, Batman and James Bond.
Did jot down some notes:
- In some ways, definition of Mary Sue = protagonist. They deform narratives.
- Policing Mary Sues = erasing women from narrative. They can't be special.
- Grr: "Mary Sue is what kids do after make-believe." "Do you want to BE them? Beginning of empathy."
- Female readers [& readers of color] have to learn putting yourself into somebody different. [White] men don't have to.
- What makes a female character TOO something?
- Why are you telling women telling stories for fun not to be so self-indulgent?
- Mary Sues have become second-person "you" in fic nowadays
- Gaming is self-insert. But I guess that's seen as fine because it's mostly guys. Except it's not mostly guys.
- "The basis of all creative impulse is self-insertion"
- I'M driving the narrative. Teen girls need power over something in their lives.
- Panelist 1: Mary Sues don't have enough conflict? Panelist 2: Eh. People writing representationally write the kinds of conflicts they experience IRL.
- Ensign Mary Sues already existed in TOS
- 'We're critiquing the wrong things about Mary Sues. We should be critiquing story, characterization, plot'
Why Women Become Protagonists - Gwenda Bond, Lisa Cohen, Rosemary Kirstein, Hillary Monahan, Navah Wolfe
In a 2015 essay about portrayals of female protagonists in crime fiction, Sara Paretsky writes, "Detectives like V.I. came to life in a time of bravado, when my peers and I... wrote out of a kind of cockiness: we're doing a job because we want it, we like the work, no one can stop us. Today, the female hero often has been brutally assaulted... or suffered some other form of serious trauma. It's as if the only acceptable reason for a woman to embrace the investigative life is to recover from damage, or get revenge for it—not because she takes pleasure in the work, and comes to it as a free spirit." Let's explore the reasons that female protagonists decide to protag, and discuss the many ways to motivate them other than assault and trauma.
The discussion did center on female protagonists and why they're great, but didn't get much into alternative motivations. Main point of note was a young black woman in the audience who spoke about the importance of not forgetting intersectionality; pointed out that there are different expectations, physiques and stereotypes for black vs. white female characters (& women IRL), that we're seeing more personality traits and body types in pop culture women but they're still following white templates; expressed disappointment that the con put seemingly all white women on the panel [though one panelist responded that she's biracial].
Other notes:
- Early inspiration: Meg Murray.
- Hate the "awesome, complex woman supplementing the mediocre guy." The best screwball comedies of the 30s & 40s are awesome guys stepping up to support mediocre chosen ladies.
- Women can be surly BEFORE assault. Aftereffects are different from what you tend to see in fiction. Hyperaware of men in elevators, when men in rooms outnumber women…
- Strong != pants, emotionless, ninja.
- "Mean girl" label instantly dehumanizes. F/f misogyny. There's always a story behind that behavior.
- Reader reactions to female characters: condemning them for typical male behavior
- <3 Jessica Jones. Flawed, unapologetic, human. Yes, raped, but aftermath core part of her, and focused on. Assault itself not shown/objectivized/exploited.
- If you're exploring reasons and repercussions well, you can use almost any motivational device. :( Men apparently don't need it.
- Leslie Knope, post-season one
- Dreamhunter Duet - Elizabeth Knox. Shadowshaper- DJ Older. Black Iris, Cam Girl - Leah Raeder.
**Book of Esther – verbs shift from passive to active when Esther becomes empowered to do something about Haman
- Fierceness/strength, mental and physical, not opposite of tenderness, domesticity
- Obligatory discussion of increasingly problematic Whedon heroines
- When does a character become a protagonist? Take control of narrative. Make choice(s). Not refuse Campbellian call.
Cozy Dystopias -
When we think of the world of Harry Potter, what comes to mind first—the magic and childish delights of Hogwarts, with its cozy dormitories and feasts and flying lessons, or its numerous, creeping dystopian elements (even discounting Voldemort!), from the enslaved house elves to Umbridge to the Dementors, which are, frankly, the tools of a fascist state? Can we make an argument that HP is actually more like a dystopia than a fantasy? Even if we're half joking, there's still an interesting discussion here: how do these two sides of the wizarding world play off each other, and how do they compare with other dystopian YA? Maybe we need a new subgenre: Cozy Dystopia.
(I'd been looking forward to seeing Gili Bar-Hillel again, who translated the Harry Potter books into Hebrew, after meeting her years ago at an HP aca-con, but the programming must have changed. Oh, well.)
(This would have been a great panel to live-tweet, but reception on my phone was terrible, and no one at the information desk knew the wifi password.)
- IMO you can't write just one genre
- What is a dystopia? Lewitt: (1) oppressive official/government system, (2) extreme class/race/ethic divisions; need underclass. Vourvoulias: (3) and it's still functional.
- Is postapocalypse dystopia?
**Some people are living in a dystopia right now
- Not everyone sees X as dystopia or utopia, within or outside the narrative
- To what extent is HP a dystopia?
- WWII elements
- Dementors as extrajudicial killings
- Boarding school inherently sadistic, esp for Muggleborns; don't like House competitions
- House Elf bondage
- Ministry like oppressive state, restrictive, limited if any elections, odd judicial process
- Harry doesn't become an activist like Hermione because the Wizarding World/Hogwarts is his dream come true? He benefits from it, is loved/celebrated there, is privileged/wealthy, has no backup?
- You can insert dystopia anywhere, in any genre. At same time, SF/F ripe for dystopia bc they're about power and worries about the future and experimental societies and curious about histories.
- Using power available to them to confront power oppressing them.
- Why can't dystopias be cozy? WALL-E. Happy endings. But does there need to be a distinction/subgenre? Dystopias are cozy for SOMEBODY. POV character & tone matter. All the things we label as cozy or familiar also happen in dystopias. You're eased in to the awfulness. POV of protected person often ~ savior complex.
- "The Ones Who Walk From Omelas," Logan's Run, Brian Aldiss' "cozy catastrophe," Doctorow's "Down and Out in the Magic Kingdom," "The Farthest Shore"
- YA dystopias are attractive: empower youth to take action if they see something wrong. Depict adults as bumbling, ineffectual (like a lot of YA?). Audience [I think Haris Durrani]: very Anglo structure, wish fulfillment of independence from elders and culture.
- Immortality gives rise to dystopias: hedonism and malaise. Voldemort creates dystopia amidst/because he's seeking immortality.
Robots as Proxies - Ted Chiang, Josh Jasper, Jim Kelly, Terence Taylor, Jo Walton
In much of science fiction, robots are thinking beings designed and programmed to be servitors. The tension in that relationship has an unavoidable parallel to slavery, so when we talk about robot uprisings, we're talking about slave revolts. From the throw-away line about the Butlerrian Jihad in the original Dune books to Asimov's laws of robotics and the story of the Centennial Man, to the Terminator, we have views of slaves who decide not to be slaves. What are some of the narratives we create for these slave analogs, and what does it mean for us to be reading them both critically and uncritically?
Great panel! Did what it promised to do. Cell phone reception lasted long enough to live-tweet some of the best insights and questions.
My favorite was learning—or possibly relearning, heh—that "robot" comes from the Czech robota, "forced labor." Jo Walton told the story of a friend who attended a Czech seder in which the Haggadah literally said, "When we were robots in Egypt," which inspired Walton to write a poem of the same title (hat tip to
katenepveu for the link). ♥Notes:
- Moderator: Reading Ta-Nehisi Coates + robot fiction = this panel
- Most people are not aware of what they're doing when they write robot uprisings. [White man's] fear of enslavement/reversal is there, but not often/always conscious. Also parents' fear of children evolving beyond them.
- Acknowledgement that not every robot is a slave metaphor
- Whether robot is slave hinges on: at what point does an AI become not less than human?
- Centennial Man back-pat: "We let them have sex with our women!"
- Asimov's (?) robots PROGRAMMED to be happy as slaves – implied they wouldn't be happy otherwise. If we don't build in laws, they'll be running this panel in 50 years, ha.
- Choice, free will. Data not a slave. Slavery when robot sees other options and blocked from pursuing.
- HAL sees humans as interfering with ability to do his job.
- Robots never seem to have emotions, families, loved ones, networks. With exceptions: Data, AI from "Her" [ed: I disagree]
- Why would we program emotions into robots? To love us back? [ed: Panelists need to read more Ancillary Justice, etc. to understand the value of emotion in an AI]
- Slavery = business model. Adding consciousness ruins plan. If you need intelligence, humans are cheaper.
- White people want to believe the slaves love their service. But they can't say no.
- Blade Runner droids want life. At least they get opportunities to philosophically discuss their angst. :)
- The next AI villain should come from inside a sophisticated game
End of the World and After: from Mary Shelley to J.G. Ballard, Russell Hoban, and Beyond - Chris Brown, Jack Haringa, Faye Ringel, Henry Wessells, Gary K. Wolfe
Modern sf stories of the end of the world often mask romantic fantasies of abundance and dominion, usually to the benefit of one or a few privileged protagonists who survive the disaster—Brian Aldiss's "cozy catastrophe." Sometimes the vision is grounded in nihilistic misanthropy—like the scientist in Cixin Liu's The Three-Body Problem, who initiates extraterrestrial first contact in an effort to lure aliens to exterminate what she considers an irredeemable human race. Other apocalypses, from early examples like Mary Shelley's The Last Man to more recent work like Cormac McCarthy's The Road and even Mad Max Fury Road, explore even bleaker scenarios. Could a study of comparative apocalypses yield ideas for better utopias?
A largely forgettable panel, I think. Here's what I wrote down:
- JG Ballard's Drowned World, Flood From Nowhere (?), Vermilion Sand, Drought; The Purple Plow; Poison Belt; Earth Strikes Back & Loosed Upon the World; Lepis (giant rabbits). Richard Jeffries, After London & The Last Man. The End of the World As We Know It. Tim Levin, White, + another with nanobots. Who Fears Death.
- It's hard to keep up. Our own world is in the midst of apocalypse, so my ingestion of it has diminished.
- I didn't think I'd see 50 or the world would see 2001
- Apocalypse feels real when we lose someone we love deeply. The personal within the larger apocalypse. Alternately, death of loved ones = metaphorical end of the world, then turned literal. Mary Shelley.
- The ride down. The world after.
- "If you're a serf or have any kind of conscience…"
- Cixin Liu and dystopia as our own history
- NYT article about post-Arab Spring story. Calcutta Chromosome, Kobo Abe, Satanic Verses.
- The "original apocalypse," Noah's flood, = punishment. Or test (Job). The Beach has same implication.
- Resurgence of angel-related stories. Good Omens, The Prophecy, etc. On verge of apocalypse, YOU can prevent. Paradise Lost --> House of Shattered Winds.
- Galapagos: utopia but not for humans
- Cat's Cradle: no one survives
- Local apocalypses: Maldives, Marshall Islands. Sudan, Syria
- Grim view: survival = utopia
- Erasure of the degenerate other vs. life is to be saved in any form
Bad Influences II - Suzy McKee Charnas, Ellen Datlow, Lara Donnelly, Maria Dahvana Headley,
Back by popular demand! This female writer and editor roundtable discussion will focus on the non-genre, possibly "inappropriate" readings of our formative years that contributed to our current careers in the feminist fantastical universe. Teenage obsessions with Charles Bukowski, Henry Miller, Herman Hesse, Salvador Dalí, and Vladimir Nabokov often led us to people like Angela Carter and Claude Cahun. What do we keep of those first artistic obsessions, and what do we critique? Which of our early influencers helped make us into the artists we are today—and which ones make us shake our heads in bewilderment?
Half on topic and half digressions, but all entertaining. Lively group of panelists discussed early influences and the mess of misogyny, external and internalized, that informed their reading and writing choices at various points in their lives.
- As a child, looked around at family and said, 'I don't like all this women's stuff I see around me.' Read the boys lit. Sexist. Later, when wrote first book, editor had to point out there were no female characters.
- My categories for this panel: Bad girls, bad boys, no girls, manly men, trash
- "Bad influences" are good for my horror and dark fantasy and f-ed up erotica
- [Many amusing stories about encountering Valley of the Horses] This is what books are about?! (overblown sex) At 12, they feel very informational.
- Rabbit, Run/series: Men feeling important and sad, and sometimes important and sad at the same time. I consider them boring and trash.
- Girls going out trying to have adventures got punished.
- RL women DID get "punished" for "bad" behavior: they ended up alone with kids, or alone without kids
- Girls and horses. Control and love.
- Riding the bus is way better for describing women than looking at magazines
200 Years of Frankenstein - Don D'Ammassa, Theodora Goss, Jack Haringa, Kathryn Morrow, Faye Ringel
2016 is the 200th anniversary of Mary Shelley's Frankenstein, considered by many critics and scholars to be the first science fiction novel. It is also in many ways the first modern horror novel, being a radical break from the traditional Gothic horror novels so popular at the time. What are the descendants of Frankenstein? How much of an effect has Shelley's novel had on the genres of horror and science fiction? Does the novel still have any relevance or usefulness today besides its historical interest? Will the readers of 2016 still enjoy it?
I'd been looking forward to this panel, especially for the potential recommendations for modern interpretations of the Frankenstein template I hadn't heard of. Unfortunately, most of the time was taken up with analysis of the text itself and discussion of its place in literary history and with picking at the statements made in the panel description. Even though many of the critiques were valid—why do we ask whether Mary Shelley/Frankenstein is still valid when we don't ask the same of Bram Stoker/Dracula, for instance—several were tiresome, like complaining about "kids today" and their lack of understanding or appreciation of classic literature. And somehow it was a surprise to the panelists to consider that one of the book's themes was that male-only creation will go wrong?! Oh, and there was a literal "Um, actually" dude in the audience. Well: even though I hadn't signed up for an English seminar, I did enjoy the throwback to college, and I've done an okay job myself of finding Frankenstein adaptations to enjoy anyway.
- Goss' forthcoming book about female versions of Gothic monsters (!)
- Rationalism vs romanticism. Attention to consequences of science/creation. Exploration/unknown as metaphor for the internal.
- Colossus
- "We're all ontological Shelleys in SF"
- Major Gothic theme continued here: implosion of the family through discovery of forbidden knowledge
- Parallel evolution to Golem, but panelist convinced not an inspiration. Monster made from bodies, not clay. Victor's role models were alchemists, not cabalists. No Jews around that geographical area (?), and most Golem tales today came from late 19th century.
- Mythological, heretical, bad parenting.
- Direct line from Paradise Lost. French Revolution?
- Movie characterization and plot stem from v early pirated theatrical version that M Shelley saw
- Panelist thinks F influenced modern tortured serial killer: I was good, encounters with people made me a killer, I have to do it, I don't enjoy it
- Shelley influenced by Byron/Percy's Greek sympathies? -->anti-Turk/Orientalist stereotypes. "Yellow peril" implication at the time of yellow-skinned villain with streaming black hair. Fear of monsters reproducing to new race.
- Q: Why not make the bride sterile? A: What did they know about fertility at the time?
**Remember Victor is an undergrad. He's not even very good at surgery. Elizabeth would have sewn it better!
- "Kill Byron if you want a perfect man."
- Q: To be hard SF, should have described the monster-making process in more detail. A: Gothic tradition: If you explain/describe it, it's not scary.
- Story proposal: "Mary Shelley goes to Clarion"
Sorting Taxonomies - John Benson, Greer Gilman, Kate Nepveu, Peter Straub, Jacob Weisman
Why do we group our fictions by genre first instead of other possible taxonomies? For instance:--By relationship: what kind of relationship appears in this fiction, and how much is it foregrounded?--By level of violence: violent, nonviolent or anti-violent?--By prose: ornate, simple, vivid, inventive?--By paradigm: is this fiction centred on people, ideas, or action? Those are a few possible ways a reader might choose between works, depending on what they want to read--all of which might include any combination of genres. Our panelists will discuss ways they choose what to read, and give some comparisons of like works from disparate genres.
Overall engaging conversation about different ways people think about story types beyond bookstore categories, give or take a few frustrating moments. I enjoyed trying to MBTI-type people based on how they categorize books, such as by figurative Pantone color. Nepveu did some of the most active panel moderating I saw all weekend. However, that didn't stop Straub from advertising his ignorance when Nepveu asked people not to assume anyone's gender and he kept going, "Huh. Huh!" like it was new to him. Nepveu won me over for good when the discussion turned to the difficulty of finding books based on unconventional features like "competence" and "found family" or "feels dark blue" and she said, "Ask me later how fanfic deals with this." Which is partly why I was so pleased to learn that we were having lunch right after.
Misc. notes:
- As an anthology editor, taxonomy is where we live
- I choose what I want to read next by feeling/mood, voice, what the author/character pulls out of the universe to notice. Is it a watercolor? Prose style, content.
- Interconnectivity of writers, who they say their influencers are. Junot Diaz cites Octavia Butler.
- You can't always read on the heights like that – CS Lewis' stories of longing and reach, being surprised by joy
- Is this going to keep me up late? (Could be good or bad) Make me angry?
- Looking for new writers in recent issues of [magazine], what makes the stories special, how would I group them, what do they say about their era. Small group, premise-->anthology, often evolves so original group doesn't end up in final collection.
- Authors you like who blurb other books can help you find what you might like. Also publishers give clues, including physical cues on the books themselves. Librarians study appeal factors. Some libraries subscribe to "Novelist."
And that's it! Overall a good way to have spent the weekend. Would go back, but would do more work ahead of time re: which panelists would be better or worse to hear and which authors do good readings. Heard I'd missed a good time with Max Gladstone this year. I also learned I'll probably be happier avoiding panels on topics that fandom discusses in depth, because they're likely to feel superficial and frustrating.
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Date: Jul. 17th, 2016 11:12 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: Jul. 17th, 2016 11:16 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: Aug. 7th, 2016 09:18 pm (UTC)I am fascinated by the categorization of 'The Ones Who Walk From Omelas' as cozy dystopia, can you remember anything more about that discussion (if there was any more)? I definitely agree, but more from the angle of finding it cozy because it's smug and one-sided as opposed to it describing a cozy dystopia, if that makes sense. Like, there is cozy for the characters vs. cozy for the reader. Which I suspect will often overlap.
HP as cozy dystopia definitely makes sense - I think one of my favorite genres of HP fic is the kind that makes explicit some of those issues and makes a serious attempt to deal with, for example, house elf rights.
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Date: Aug. 7th, 2016 10:10 pm (UTC)