bironic

Quarantinewhile:

Wed, 30 Jun 2021 19:50:59 GMT

(as Stephen Colbert said until recently)

Doing: Move-related stuff. thedeadparrot helped me haul the world's greatest secondhand bed frame across town. My dad and sister came up for a few days for an initial round of painting. We did a nice gray in the main area that doesn't turn blue in the northwestern light, unlike in my current living room; an awesome purple-gray in the bathroom; and a bright yellow-green in the kitchen, something I'd wanted for ages.

Then we experimented with doing an ombre accent wall. The mid- and dark grays I picked are not quite in the right family, but the final product is growing on me. It looks like storm clouds or a misty forest canopy. Some pix.

stultiloquentia borrowed me to go strawberry picking. Yum! The farm had seven varieties. The one called Cleary was far and away my favorite. Sweet and bright, with a little white crown at the stem. Another called Cavendish came in second. I ate some fresh. The rest await the right recipes in the freezer. We had lunch under a tree.

(Did I mention the condo has a real fridge/freezer? The apartment freezer can't be more than 2 cubic feet and goes through unpredictable temperature cycles so everything ends up thawed and refrozen and speared through with ice crystals.)

This weekend I will be attending a small BBQ for the first time in two years. Inside? With multiple people? Honestly, I'm not sure I'm ready.

Going: The day science deemed me fully vaccinated against COVID, I drove to NY to see my family, who'd been ahead of us on the vaccination front. My sister and I then flew to Florida to visit our grandfather in anticipation of his 100th birthday! So I went from staying in the house except for bike riding and occasional double-masked grocery runs to sitting in a packed airport and visiting an elder care facility. Then spent time at both parents' houses unmasked. Zero to 60. What felt weirdest was how weird it didn't feel. Neither terrifying nor joyful. Like the pandemic had created a buffer between me and reality without my noticing, tamping down reentry emotions.

Fortunately, everything turned out fine. He was so happy to see us. The cold my sister came down with on the second day proved by virtue of both rapid and PCR testing to be indeed just a cold, and no one else caught it. His actual birthday went swimmingly last week, he reports. And now I'm back to staying mostly at home while getting more comfortable visiting with one or two friends at a time in their homes or in a car.

I also "went" to con_txt this past weekend. A lovely time, as usual, and extra sweet after having missed vidukon and wiscon. So proud of my friends for putting it together in its second virtual incarnation. Need to catch up on the vid shows.

Watching: A reality show called Secrets of the Zoo on Disney+, which follows veterinarians at the Columbus Zoo in Ohio. It's great for animal cuteness and education, but not great whenever they lose a patient.

Then I finished the first season of Star Trek: Lower Decks, inspired by cinco and celli at their panel on new Trek incarnations at con.txt. It did grow on me. As they promised, it talked back to TOS and TNG while showing a deep knowledge of and fondness for the franchise. The episode inspired by "Space Seed" and The Wrath of Khan did what JJ Abrams' Star Trek and Star Wars reboots should have done: taken a beloved original and told a new story while still paying homage to it visually/linguistically/thematically.

Next up, Discovery season three while I have this oops-I-forgot-to-cancel-after-the-free-trial month of Paramount+? Seasons one and two left me cold, but the panel did make a case for giving the show another try.

Reading: Sort of nothing? It's taking me ages to finish How to Be an Anti-Racist, which has nothing to do with the book and everything to do with my pandemic brain and lack of commute. I would like to read the Golem & the Jinni sequel that just came out. I'm in the queue at the library.

Vidding: On hiatus. It'll be interesting to see which idea breaks the dam.

How are you?

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Getting a read on mid-July

Sat, 13 Jul 2019 00:23:16 GMT

Hello! It's been a weird week. Four days ago I was in Switzerland. More on that soon. Since then it's been a headfirst dive into apartment hunting and a work assignment I had a hard time with. At least the assignment is done now.

I.

Trying to find a satisfying new place to live on short notice in peak season in a rent-inflated city is stressful and I do not recommend it. I haven't learned yet how to set manageable goals for the search, i.e. when it's okay to stop each day or each session. I'm also trying to define when a listing is worth compromising on vs. what I've done so far, which is keep holding out for better. Not counting the awesome-looking place that went off the market literally two minutes after I set up an appointment to view it. I am feeling many negative feelings and reminding myself to simply feel them and keep going.

II.

A break in the clouds. Last night stultiloquentia and I popped down to Readercon's free first evening, since neither of us could make the official con Fri-Sun. I really wanted to hear Stephen Graham Jones, this year's co-Guest of Honor with Tananarive Due, and see if he would sign the copy of Mapping the Interior that gretchening sent last year as a gift. (He did!) And as luck would have it, SGJ's Thursday panel included our local writer and film critic sovay and moderator Darcie Little Badger a.k.a. shiningcomic, both of whom I started following a couple of Readercons ago, plus teri.zin and Paul Tremblay.

The topic was "Being Vague to Make Space for Horror," about how ambiguity rather than clarity serves the genre. Different kinds of ambiguity. The horror of not being believed, in life and in fiction. The discomfort of not being able to put names to things, in life and in fiction. How ambiguity can arise from an author struggling with disbelief in the supernatural while writing it. (Tremblay: 'I don't think it'd be a six-foot ghost. I'd try to explain away whatever it was. I'd keep thinking about it later. I'd be unsettled.') Ambiguity as a different thing from confusion or authorial laziness. (SGJ: 'I always commit to one or the other in my head. [i.e. Is this thing real or not?] I pick whichever is more fun. And then I entertain the opposite in the story.') What authors know about their characters and what happens offscreen and before and after the story, and what they don't. What happens in the rarer cases when providing an answer works for the story. (Examples cited: Get Out, Cat People, Scream, Midsommar, Hereditary, Visible Filth.) The satisfaction of dissatisfaction. The value of being unsettled, dislocated, wondering.

The fresh reading of Mapping the Interior proved an excellent lens through which to appreciate the discussion.

I also bumped into kate_nepveu on the way out and tried to help her right a faltering easel. And that's pretty much everybody I could have hoped to recognize at the con except yhlee. Sorry to miss you this year. Be safe down there.

Of course, seeing Tananarive Due would have been excellent too. Alas. At least stultiloquentia was able to go to her panel during the same slot: "Afrofuturism and Solarpunk in Dialogue."

III.

Before jetting off on the work trip, I did finish both stories for nonconathon! Like, just before jetting off. I cranked out the rest of the second story across something like six hours and two thunderstorms with one break to look at an apartment, posted it, took a shower and left for the airport, where I polished a few rough spots from my phone.

Almost 9,000 words total. I think they both could have used more work, being unplanned first drafts written across multiple sittings. But they exist, and that is what matters. One of them—the down-to-the-wire one—has done quite well. The other, at least the recipient liked, or politely pretended to, heh. Could also be a consequence of being buried toward the back of the 232-story collection.

Reveals are this weekend, I believe. Will post some recs after. I haven't read any fics since returning to work but I did enjoy a bunch on the flight home, pre-downloaded, largely in the Original Works category.

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Vividcon report, part two: panels and vids

Sun, 19 Aug 2018 13:26:29 GMT

Continued from here.

I neglected to say in the last post that, while overhearing fandom conversations and watching vids over the past many years has made me conversant in many shows/movies I haven't seen, it's still nice when something you like pops up at VVC. I smiled at a couple of clips of Sebastian Roche in a Supernatural vid during Premieres. (There were approximately 500,000 SPN vids this year.) I also had a good time talking with kiki_miserychic about what turns out to be shared ambivalence over Westworld, with franzeska about the delights of Longmire (sorry for hijacking your convo, thirdblindmouse), and with grammarwoman, corbae & sansets about Westworld & the equally frustrating-yet-sometimes-beautiful American Gods. See also: "fandom nostalgia" in the recs section.

( Panels )

( Vid Discussion Panels )

( Vid Recs )

Full programming list at vividcon.info.

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Vividcon report, part one: broad picture

Fri, 17 Aug 2018 22:21:02 GMT

I had a very nice time at the final Vividcon. Talked with many people I don't tend to see the rest of the year—there was a sizeable Boston-area contingent that it would have been fun to spend more time with, but I figured that could happen elsewhen—and met some new ones; attended almost all the panels; successfully co-modded one of them; and watched a lot of vids. Premieres and Club Vivid alone added up to 7 hours.

Perspective

It seems my experience at Vividcon, both this year and overall—I just counted and I went 6 times in 9 years—fall into the middle of the road. At the closing panel, some attendees shared passionate stories about meeting life partners at the con, forging their strongest RL friendships, finding their people, being able to be out and open and themselves. Others who spoke outside the session, or were not there to speak, tried the con and found it unwelcoming or a poor fit or were driven away by the accessibility issues that came to a head in 2010. (That was the first year I attended, and I was not plugged in to anyone or anything enough to even be aware the debates were raging. I still don't fully understand what happened and don't know if that Fanlore link accurately conveys people's points of view. I do know that several friends got burned.)

I had some meaningful conversations at various VVCs that will stay with me for a long time, I saw some incredible vids in an irreproducible group environment, and I have made fan friends and acquaintances there that I have visited or can visit in different parts of the world, but I'm not sure I would say the con has changed my life. Nor has it left a bitter taste in my mouth. Perhaps that speaks to my naïveté.

I'm glad to have had the opportunities to go to panels that taught me how to think more deeply about and get better at vidding. I've given and received feedback on vids in a way that has strengthened my confidence and my sense of belonging to a community, alongside experiences at other cons and online through Festivids etc. I cherish that first year when I was able to meet a whole cluster of people I'd come to know and admire through Kink Bingo.

And I will always be grateful that the con allowed me to have one-on-one or small-group lunches with three of the four vidders whose work was the most inspirational and influential for me when I was starting out around 2009 and that I continue to love and study today: obsessive24, hollywoodgrrl and, as of this weekend, sol_se. newkidfan would round out the set.

Oddnesses

Well, there were a few odd moments.

At a group dinner one night, cesperanza mentioned in reference to, I believe, "The Greatest," although it could have been "Starships!"—I couldn't quite follow; the conversation kept rapidly shifting—that 'of course' the vid was going to be 'in every book ever' about, I don't know, vidding history? Or something? The subject matters less than how she said it as though it were obvious, when I hadn't known she'd even seen "The Greatest." It got me thinking about disconnects between what may appear to be community-wide conversations, and on- and offline conversations among influencers, and what any given individual fan, including a fanwork creator, is aware of. In this case: If you don’t share your response on Dreamwidth or AO3 or Twitter or Tumblr or by email or in person, I’m not going to know. If you don’t have a public conversation I can discover, I’m not going to know.

On a more jarring note, two separate panels showed clips from the same years-old vid that used footage from Nazi Germany and the Holocaust, without warning us. I wish I'd said something the first time, but I was too busy reconciling "sudden Holocaust" with "being at Vividcon." I heard there is some irony here in that the vid may have been involved in that 2010 debate about including warnings?

Lastly, this is not about the con or even about the person but I had a disorienting moment when someone made an offhand comment about my physical characteristics that marked the second time in the last year or so that a fan friend/acquaintance has implied that being Jewish makes me less white. (I am, boringly, really quite white.) I'm lucky things like this have happened rarely enough that I can still remember most of them, but that doesn't make it any more pleasant.

At the same time, I was invited to what has become an annual Shabbat dinner with friends on Friday night before Premieres, so, you know, things balance out.

Progress

Listing everyone I was glad to hang out with always feels like name-dropping, so how about we focus on the new people I met this year? Not only sol_se but also starlady, who made Galaxyrise, aurumcalendula, who's been churning out vids for various cons and 'fests since bursting onto the scene a couple of years ago, gwenfrankenstien, who made my Gods & Monsters Festivid this year, bethofalltrades, who's diving into a multi-Trek vidding project, and Kandy Fong, credited with starting this whole fanvidding thing with her Star Trek slide shows in the '70s.

I've been thinking about change over time. It took a while to work up the nerve to go to Vividcon, then to talk to strangers and to the people I was (am) a fan of, then to bring vids of my own. Now I do things like walk up to Kandy Fong in the con suite and strike up a half-hour conversation. A cohort of con staff and attendees knows who I am, and sometimes people even ask me questions about vids. This year I approached someone whose work is a level above mine and asked if she'd be willing to do developmental and editing beta work on a tricky project I'm kicking around. (She said yes!) I'd like to do more of that kind of thing going forward; learning not only from watching vids but also by reaching out to the vidders.

Part two: Panel notes and vid recs.

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Five thoughts for a Monday

Tue, 19 Dec 2017 00:44:34 GMT

1. You know you've got the blues when you scoff at your own Mary Sue fantasy story from last year because there's no way those other characters would treat her as special.

2. The blues only present themselves sometimes, though. This weekend was generally lovely, including attending a Hanukkah party, heckling Fifty Shades Darker with thedeadparrot*, and allowing myself to buy a handful of treats from Cardullo's in Harvard Square, one of which I had been eyeing for years. Then I triumphed over past culinary disappointments by making a roast beef that wasn't overdone! Third time's the charm, I guess. That and cooking it at 275° F.

*2a. Still not as bad as the book, and I think better than the Rotten Tomatoes critics' score of 10% gives it credit for as a close adaptation -- there are several funny moments, most of them seemingly intentional! the character arcs are at least somewhat coherent! the, uh, color palettes are pretty! -- but still, yeah, this relationship makes no sense, the acting and/or direction to not-act is terrible, the main characters are allergic to substantive conversation, it's unfortunate to reinforce the idea that a woman can change a man's lifelong behaviors and deepest values by loving him, it's offensive to claim that enjoying BDSM is an easily corrected pathology driven by a bad childhood, and the pacing choices are odd. My genuinely favorite part was that this mainstream movie not only featured a spreader bar but also showed it being ratcheted open and used for pleasure rather than some villainous torture.

Reviews I liked:

New Republic - Sustained comparison to Working Girl; appreciation of Dakota Johnson's attempts to transcend the material. "Fifty Shades Darker, which fails so many tests of basic storytelling competence, is all the more stunning for its success at a task that most movies don't even bother attempting: depicting a woman's sexual pleasure."
MTV - Made me laugh out loud; similar appreciation of Johnson's acting abilities; agreement that director did indeed intend to be funny. "Dornan's handsome, even if his cold, accusing eyes make you think of a catfish slammed onto a pier."

3. "Feast or famine," the library clerk said as I picked up another armful of books that came in all at once after being on hold for weeks. Having just finished Unbeatable Squirrel Girl vols. 3-4 and Moonshot: The Indigenous Comics Collection, I'm working my way through the 400-page My Favorite Thing is Monsters, while stacked up on the nightstand are Call Me By Your Name, The Book of Dust, Ms. Marvel vol. 1, Unbeatable Squirrel Girl vols. 5-6, Lumberjanes vols. 1-2, and if I can get to it before it's due back, Alif the Unseen. (I needed to read ~7 books this month if I was going to reach my arbitrary goal of a book a week on average for 2017, so I requested a bunch of graphic novels, heh, not realizing how intense Monsters is.)

4. Help can be hard to ask for, even for small, mundane things. I'm grateful to serenadestrong, seascribe, mollyamory and Mr. disgruntled_owl for ferrying me around while my car is in the shop (yes, still) and now also to thedeadparrot for providing laundry access while our in-house washer/dryer is on the fritz. Between those, the autumn fire-alarm malfunction, the elusive kitchen mouse, and the humidifier and nighttime white-noise fan giving up the ghost this week, it feels like everything is breaking. Much like in the world.

I'm grateful to the wider fannish network for chiming in with guidance on yet more SF/F/horror sources for this auction vid, now that we are down to the TV shows that don't really appeal to me. I sent out the final (?!) batch of pleas last weekend and then had to go sit under a blanket because I hate asking people to do work for me. This is going to be the last multifandom vid I make for a while that involves sources I don't know.

5. Speaking of which, I was invited to co-mod a panel next year at Vividcon on multifandom vids, and I said yes? I'm already nervous. I haven't moderated or presented at a con since 2006, and never at Vividcon. Good thing the other co-mods who've signed on so far are non-scary people. Need to ask jetpack_monkey his thoughts, since he modded a panel on the same topic just last year. Maybe take a longitudinal perspective on multifandom vids in general or lessons learned from each vidder's own experiences over time. Not that I know enough to talk about the former, but our possible VCR-vidder co-mod might.

But there is something fitting about finally doing something like this at the last Vividcon.

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What’s up, August edition: vidding

Tue, 15 Aug 2017 14:48:13 GMT

It's periodic crunch time at work, so a proper post / con report will have to wait a bit longer. For now:

vividcon was lovely. I had some good conversations with a few people I'd expected to catch up with and a few I had not; went to most of the panels; saw only a fraction of the vids screened but still came away with several favorites; stayed on an even emotional keel the whole weekend; and returned with renewed vigor for creative pursuits…

…most notably this extensive auction vid that's been in progress since the spring. After VVC I finally processed all the DVD footage I've been collecting, figured out how to get a bunch of MKV files into Adobe Premiere (tried absolutedestiny's FFmpeg tutorial for format conversion but gave up in favor of DirectShowSource in the more familiar Avisynth), and skimmed two seasons of American Horror Story with drglam's guidance. I'd been putting that off along with The Walking Dead & Z Nation because horror TV is not always my thing, but it went fine. Forging onward.

Meanwhile, I made the mistake of perusing equinox_exchange requests on the AO3 and ended up with a vid idea that I don't have time to make, except I started making it. *facepalm* I don't even go here, as they say, but I think the concept is beautiful, and the draft is making me have an emotion. Fortunately, what at first seemed like an intimidating endeavor is coming together faster than expected.

Still, my primary focus needs to be the auction vid, and I'll be away three of the six weekends between now and Equinox go-live, so we'll see if this other vid gets done in time or if the DS9 vidlet began a tradition of posting treats three months late.

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Oases in the ... desert of current events?

Fri, 17 Mar 2017 01:38:10 GMT

All that and I forgot to say I've registered for vividcon in August and Readercon in July. Readercon's guests of honor this year are Naomi Novik and Nnedi Okorafor. Looking forward to hearing about more attending authors.

*

My hair is straight! For a couple of days, anyway. I went for a haircut with a new, recommended curl-savvy hairdresser who said she wanted to straighten it before cutting it to ensure the cut would be even, which is the opposite of what most people have proposed before. Now it's all swoopy and flippy and when I look in the mirror I actually feel pretty.

(Cue conflicted thoughts about societal notions of beauty and what it means that I like the result of this erasure of one visible aspect of my Eastern European/Russian Jewish heritage, but I think it's just that it frames my face really well right now.)

It hasn't been straight since my friend flat-ironed it 10+ years ago for a Halloween party where I went as Snape, so it is quite a revelation. The results are making me want to do it once in a while now for fun. Er, although I don't own a blow dryer or flat iron.

*

We had a snow day this week. It seems like ages ago already. I had grand plans for watching some vid-related movies & TV but then we lost power for half the day so I read,* wrote and shoveled. 1,800 new words on an old Mary Sue story. I'm liking this trend.

*Lagoon by Okorafor; I would put it behind Binti and ahead of Akata Witch for enjoyment level.

*

I did finally finish Suicide Squad tonight, which was as mediocre and eye-rollingly misogynistic/exploitative as promised, with bonus racism and overkill special effects. Even so, I did enjoy some aspects, including Will Smith, Jay Hernandez and the human Rocket Pop that was Margot Robbie as Harley Quinn. But no one warned me that Adam Beach ( spoiler ).

*

Been seeing lots of movies in the theater, and there are still many coming up that are appealing. Want to post about them properly one of these days. Like Get Out, which was so, so smart, and Logan, and the Oscar-nominated animated short films, and soon Raw, and Life, and possibly Personal Shopper...

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Star Trek con part 2: fan panels, cosplay contest, etc.

Fri, 09 Sep 2016 01:17:18 GMT

Happy actual 50th anniversary day!

Previous post: cast member one-on-ones

iggyw & I went to something like 18 panels over the course of the con (Khaaaaan). Many of them we only attended portions of; the schedule had three or four tracks that tended to overlap one another either entirely or by 15-30 minutes out of 60, which I suppose was useful for some people but also made it hard to stay for an entire presentation/discussion without feeling like you were missing something equally interesting. And yet there were dead zones at other times. *shrug*

I went to most of the talks I'd wanted to go to. Some of them met or exceeded expectations while others disappointed. An overall critique is that there were way too many white dudes up on stage. I only remember one panel with a female moderator, the leader of the Black Tribbles podcast team. No coincidence that that was a great session. Oh, and one lecture was half husband and half wife. A few other panels—but too few—had women on them. Disappointing, and reflected neither the demographics of the fandom or even of the con attendees nor the people who've worked on the shows (the "Writing for Trek" panel featured zero women, for instance). Likely the Feminist Fandom, Queer Trekkers and Women of Trek panels had greater presenter diversity, but I unfortunately missed them due to what they were scheduled against. Which is itself another kind of slight by the con organizers, putting them up against the big cast panels lots of people wanted to go to.

That said: Six of the panels we attended featured cast members; will write about those separately. The rest included:

FRIDAY

( The History and Future of Star Trek novels )

( Fanbros: TNG vs DS9 )

( Galaxy Quests: The Humor of Star Trek and Beyond )

( Thriving on Limitations: Behind the Scenes of The Wrath of Khan )

( The First Convention and How It Helped Resurrect Star Trek )

( The Evolution of Star Trek's Fandom )

SATURDAY

( Growing Up Trek )

( Writing for Star Trek )

( Meet Writer-Producers from Star Trek: Discovery )

( Black Tribbles: Star Trek Into Blackness )

( ST IV table read )

And then there was the cosplay contest, but there's only one panel left to describe and there's not much to say, so let's do that first and then get back to the awesome costumes.

SUNDAY

( Trek Talks: NASA )

So, yes, the ( cosplay contest! )

Last but not least: Next post will be about the cast panels. \o/

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Star Trek con part 1: cast member one-on-ones

Tue, 06 Sep 2016 23:27:11 GMT

As I may have mentioned ~~about fifty times~~, this weekend I went with iggyw to a 50th anniversary Star Trek convention in New York! Various cast members from all the series and movies attended, plus writers, directors, tie-in novel authors and editors, the organizers of the first Trek con back in the '70s, ancillary media producers such as podcasters and bloggers, people who've reconstructed sets and props, several thousand "ordinary" fans like us, NASA employees, vendors, etc.

My first con was actually the 25th Star Trek anniversary when I was 10 years old; Leonard Nimoy and William Shatner came to Long Island to do their shtick. My mom won the tickets on a radio show and she and my dad bought me a little TNG comm badge when we got there. So coming back for the 50th felt all the more meaningful. And poignant, of course, with the loss of Nimoy. I'm forever grateful to have had the opportunity to hear him speak at length in 2011 at a temple in Maryland.

(A few people spoke about Anton Yelchin, too, from the heart. But there was no official programming to memorialize him, whereas there were at least three events in Nimoy's honor. Strange and sad.)

For me, the main reason to go to an "official"/top-down con, with all the costs and crowds and tacky commercialism, is to meet celebrities and watch them interact with one another. I am very happy with how things turned out on that front. Details below!

A future post will cover the many panels we tried out, plus the excellent cosplay, dinner with coffeeandink, and other miscellany. Just crunched for time this week with work stuff.

( One-on-one interactions )

( DS9 cast photo )

Next post: ~~cast panels (DS9, TNG, VOY, TOS-sort-of)~~ non-cast panels, cosplay contest, etc.

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"A Spankin' Good Time" playlist (kink vid show)

Thu, 18 Aug 2016 21:25:03 GMT

Once upon a time elipie and I had separate ideas to put together a kink-themed vid show for vividcon. Unlike me, elipie remembered to submit the idea when the time came. But she graciously took me on as a co-mod when I realized what had happened, and after a couple of weeks of merged lists, spreadsheets, IM sessions and gnashing of teeth, we settled on our 20 vids.

We wanted to feature vids that portray kinks and kinkiness in a positive light; tried for a variety of kinks, tones, styles, fandoms, vidders, pairing/moresome types and character demographics*; limited the list to one vid per vidder; and made sure to include at least some vids that hadn't been created for Kink Bingo, so the list wouldn't all be familiar to kink-vid fans who followed the community. elipie also cajoled anoel and thirdblindmouse into making premieres for the show on short notice! Definitely watch both of them; they are great. One has pain- and consent-play femslash and the other has alien sex!

*Some of these efforts panned out better than others, but I think we're both generally happy with the final list -- and hope you are too.

( Playlist )

And the shortlist of runners-up. Some we had to remove because we were limited to 20 vids even if they fit within the allotted time; some were alternates.

( runners-up )

Bonus vids that screened during Vividcon that it's too bad we couldn't include:

Switch Screens by lola (UnREAL) - voyeurism woo

Anything For You by Willion (Furry fandom) - such a sweet story about finding one's inner furry kink/identity

etc. etc. etc., so many other great kink vids out there, but also please make more. ♥

Thanks to everyone who pitched ideas to us in person, on DW and/or on Twitter. You helped strengthen the playlist, introduced us to new works by unfamiliar artists, and sometimes made us laugh (everyone be glad/sad we didn't put in the mechanical tentacle porn set to "Inspector Gadget").

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Vividcon in brief. Uh, or not so brief.

Wed, 17 Aug 2016 23:32:24 GMT

A good weekend.

I saw some fantastic vids, danced with a T-rex at Club Vivid, met a baby, shared in a Shabbat dinner, hugged and was hugged, and caught up with several vidding friends and got to know others better. There was one rough patch, but with a little initiative and the company of friends & acquaintances, it soon passed.

My first time co-modding a vid show proved to be a positive experience thanks to the best partner, elipie, and the 20 or so people who came to see it despite it being scheduled right after lunch and opposite a Star Trek panel. We ~~will post~~ have posted the kinky playlist.

My three new vids went over well:

jetpack_monkey and I found a larger-than-expected audience for our Boris Karloff body-snatching Auction vid, "To the Grave";

my little Ferngully vid, "Sing," made a surprising number of people have feelings;

and then Ann Leckie retweeted/reblogged/posted about the "Ancillary Justice" book trailer (!). ETA: Uh and then --> Metafilter --> Tor.com?! What is happening.

"Starships!" closed out Club Vivid before the traditional finale of "Can't Stop the Rock," and I can't articulate how it felt to witness a room full of fans singing along and dancing as it played, hands up to touch the sky.

( Vid recs, show/panel notes and social stuff )

Other con reports: kass, seekingferret, anoel ...

State of Vidding from Morgan Dawn

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His Dark Materials | Twilight | Emotional state

Mon, 01 Aug 2016 00:32:18 GMT

One of the local Little Free Libraries had a copy of The Golden Compass by Philip Pullman and that finally motivated me to start reading His Dark Materials after all these years. People were super into them around the time we were going to Harry Potter aca-cons and of course there've been a million fannish AUs but I never got around to trying the series, other than going to see that forgettable film adaptation.

After an uncertain start, I got really into it, especially the human-dæmon relationships. I hadn't realized how into it until I found myself choking up at the descriptions of ( spoilery ). Also I hadn't realized how explicitly Pullman described what happens between dæmons when their humans get frisky together. Many years late to this party.

I bought the other two books yesterday and will read them in & around the new Harry Potter one that I pre-ordered but haven't picked up yet.

Obv. there are things to enjoy and things to critique and thinky stuff about Pullman's reaction to C.S. Lewis and the Church but we are not here for in-depth analysis right now. Work is rough these days as we undergo managerial transitions and as a result my entertainment has swung toward pleasure and comfort. See also: I've taken a break from vid-research movies and just rewatched the Twilight series. Well, that's sort of for vid research too, but a different project, and I wasn't taking notes. And I rewatched the beginning of the terrible-but-I-don't-care TV show Roar from 1997, because my heart.

Was sad to miss con.txt this weekend and all the friends who go with it. At least there's only a week and a half 'til Vividcon. Hang in there, self: Hugs and vids and conversation and mini-vacation are nigh.

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Readercon part 2 of 2: Panel notes

Sun, 17 Jul 2016 23:06:26 GMT

Continued from here (personal experience at the con)

In chronological order:

( SF in the Classical Tradition, incl. Catherynne M. Valente )

( The Life and Times of Mary Sue )

( Why Women Become Protagonists, incl. Rosemary Kirstein )

( Cozy Dystopias )

( Robots as Proxies )

( End of the World and After )

( Bad Influences II, incl. Kelly Link )

( 200 Years of Frankenstein )

( Sorting Taxonomies, incl. Kate Nepveu & Peter Straub )

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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Readercon part 1 of 2: Personal experience

Sun, 17 Jul 2016 19:12:16 GMT

stultiloquentia clued me in to Readercon, an SF/F book-focused con that takes place locally: this year in Quincy. For my own mental health, I decided at the last minute to take a day off work and give it a try. Then it took more than a week to summon enough energy and semi-articulateness to write a post. Sorry about that.

Highlights:

- Meeting Rosemary Kirstein, author of the ongoing Steerswoman series! She spoke on a panel about how to motivate female protagonists besides trauma. No blockbuster notes from that session, but I went up afterwards along with a few other attendees to say how much I liked her books. She was nice. She mentioned how difficult it's been to pick up the next draft after her health scares etc., and agreed with a laugh that it's hard to sign an e-book since the series is largely out of print. Also I learned that it's Kir-stine, not Kir-steen.

- Meeting Kelly Link (author of Get in Trouble: Stories, among others)! She took part in a big, fun panel about "bad influences"—more on that in the next post—and agreed to sign books for two of us afterwards. Hilariously/embarrassingly, a combination of weeks-long brain struggles and being in passive panel-listening mode meant that I totally blanked when she asked me a few questions, like whether I write, what sources I've written fanfiction for and what town in Texas my friend lives in who recommended the book. *facepalm* At least her signing the other guy's book gave me the moments needed to recall a few books and TV shows I've written fic for lately; then we talked for a minute about The Vampire Diaries and how that introduced her to online fandom. She wore deep blue lipstick.

- Joining stultiloquentia on Saturday for lunch she arranged with people who turned out to be kate_nepveu, who runs Con or Bust, and yhlee, founder of festivids, whose book Ninefox Gambit just came out. (I haven't read it yet but have it on order at the library.) I'd learned from the #readercon hashtag that yhlee was coming and I'd hoped to meet him, so lunch was serendipitous. And they knew my vids (!!!). An unexpected moment of LJ/DW/AO3-style fannish connection at a con focused on pro SF/F authors and editors and publishers. We talked SGA, metatagging, vidding, panel moderation, math and English education, storytelling in different media, recs for a project stulti's working on... They were both a delight to meet, if briefly. ♥ our people ♥

- Panel about robot narratives as slave uprisings, with bonus etymology + awesome Seder reference. Details to follow.

- Seeing Catherynne M. (Cat) Valente on a panel after our book club read Deathless. It seems Samuel R. Delaney was also a Readercon guest, but I missed him. :( :( Also Junot Diaz, obviously, but he's local and so I've been adjacent to him on many occasions, heh.

Lowlights:

- Personal: I'd thought that, if anything, being around so much enjoyment and analysis of science fiction and fantasy texts would boost my motivation to get back to my own writing. Instead, I felt something closer to despair at the whole endeavor of publishing. So many authors and books I'd never heard of, current and past, even in my favorite genre; so many people struggling for their work to be recognized, or who've published numerous books to little effect… I asked myself, as I do every so often: What's the point? What are the chances of conceiving a compelling story, and telling it so well, that it rises above the voluminous mediocrity and makes a lasting mark? Is there a point to writing a book if it doesn't? Did I just go to a bad combination of panels for thinking about these questions? Does Readercon attract mostly a certain level of author that made this stand out to me? Is part of my brain simply trying to talk me out of attempting a novel one day because not trying is better than failing? When did I stop believing that I could produce something extraordinary?

(And yet, the satisfaction of producing a fic or a vid or a creative product for my job is often enough in itself, which suggests that it would be the same for a book, and I get all "eeee" inside when a single stranger compliments something I've made, especially if I trust their judgment. It's all very confusing.)

- Cultural: As a first-time attendee who didn't do her homework, I had no connection to the communities of panelists or attendees and only afterwards began to learn about other people's histories with the con (fx, I'd forgotten that Readercon was the one with the notorious harassment case), about what was going on around me, behind the scenes and in panels I didn't attend. I only witnessed a few of the instances of racism, sexism and lack of discussion on intersectionality that other attendees wrote about at length. I'd accepted that the con was book-focused, only to learn that others were expressing their frustrations with its reluctance to embrace other SF/F media and with some panelists' literary snobbery.

Further reading:

https://sabrinavourvoulias.com/2016/07/11/readercon-27-confronting-the-fails/
https://mikkikendall.com/2016/07/13/readercon-low-point-lessons/

- The aforementioned mental health/biochemical stuff meant I missed Sunday's programming—panels on magic in space, blue collar SF and short story anatomy—the latter two of which seem to have been notable. Sad face.

Next post: Panel notes

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Vividcon part 2 of 3: vid recs first batch

Wed, 12 Aug 2015 01:20:04 GMT

I laughed, I cried, I marveled at people's skills. Or: favorite new & new-to-me vids of those I saw at the con. I only went to two of the ten non-plenary vid shows, so there will surely be more to rec from the streams/DVDs. Stay tuned.

*denotes super-favorites

( 25 recs + commentary )

Will add the rest of the links as they become available. Will also follow up with recs from the vid shows I haven't yet seen, including a good chunk of Club Vivid.

See also: half a dozen recs in yesterday's con report.

Meanwhile, a full list of what showed at VVC can be found at http://vividcon.info/.

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Vividcon part 1: con report

Tue, 11 Aug 2015 00:03:28 GMT

I had a great time at Vividcon this weekend. It was my third time going, over a span of six years, and each one has felt more comfortable than the last. I learn more about the history of vidding and vidders and pick up more skills and get to know more people, or get to know people better.

This year's new experience was encountering again and again people's love for Starships. It just fills my heart with joy that it makes people so happy, and it's surreal (but also a thrill) to, for example, hear it mentioned as an annual Club Vivid favorite, or to learn that it was included in a suite of vids that helped convince a college to archive older fanvids. Although I have not yet learned how to react to effusive compliments, eep.

( Social-type highlights of the con: cosplay, Shabbat, conversation, and more )

( Panels )

And with that, I am out of brain. Choosing to blame all the adjectives and "to be" constructions in this post on the fact that I haven't had a full night's sleep in a week! Vid recs ~~to follow at some point~~ here.

ETA: Other people's con reports: giandujakiss, kass, sheafrotherdon, jetpack_monkey, ghost-lingering on the fandom-specific panels

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