Swancon panel thoughts

[alias_sqbr]

A brief summary of the panels I went to this con, if only to remind myself of the thoughts I had about them and mean to expand on later. The time between these panels was spent either chatting or resting. Many very cool sounding panels were missed! I was feeling particularly tired this con which unfortunately made it harder to reign in my tendency towards grumpy ranting :/ Overall I had a fantastic time though.


Good bad and forgettable: Buffy review
This was fun, but it felt like it was both too spoilery for people who hadn't seen the show and too vague for those who had. Of course fixing either problem would make the other worse...

Dark Fantasy
I'd never really thought about this as a genre, but from the way people were describing it while it's not exactly what I want from fantasy I think it has a higher likelyhood of being my sort of thing than fantasy in general. For example: Dragon Age Origins :D (Which some other people also squeed about, yay)

Aussiecon:
Interesting discussion, made me start thinking about what panels I want to suggest.

Safe Spaces:
The panelists had obviously done a lot of preparation for this and had some really thought out approaches (eg being Ask vs Guess), but to my mind they were a bit too good at listening to the audience and not enough at saying "SHUT UP WE WILL EXPLAIN HOW TO LISTEN". But perhaps the fact I think they should have done that is a sign of why I shouldn't run this sort of panel :D The ideas from this panel came up in several conversations I had afterwards, definitely an overall positive effect. Got me thinking about my own tendency to not listen to people at cons eg in panels (as you may be able to see from this post). Sadly the post-panel discussion overlapped my disability panel which made me a bit sad for multiple reasons but I can see why they didn't want to delay it.

Disability in SF
This went really well! pharaoh_katt was a great moderator, and the audience had lots to contribute. The presentation is here if anyone's interested. There was no AV but distantcam went to great effort to find one and set it up for me just in time for the first slide with pictures, huzzah. Afterwards I realised I forgot to mention Admiral Pike who I think is a really interesting disabled character in recent SF (well done imo, if not OMG awesome)

Andy Warhol and Fan Mixing:
I'd actually written a post on this subject just before the con and not posted it since I wouldn't be able to reply to comments (it shall thus appear here eventually) so was very interested to see what they(*) had to say! It was great, I learned a bunch about Andy Warhol and had lots of interesting thinky thoughts.

Gynaecon 10th Anniversary
This was very nice. I got to bring up my issue with how the structure means the same-ish set of white mostly able bodied women end up running all the panels, which is ok for feminism but not when it ends up being the default slot for discussions of race or disability etc (Which isn't really Gynaecon's fault imo but still something they should keep in mind) and there was general suggestions of it being turned more into a toolkit for anyone who wants to run guerilla con type stuff so yay.

Comics you Should be Reading
Mostly stuff that either didn't look very appealing (apparently noone else had heard of the Frank Miller test but not all of the comics passed it, let alone the Bechdel Test) or I'd already read but some promising looking things. I once again made a mental note to try out Powers and Atomic Robo and maybe one day I will :D

Masquerade:
Wore my wedding dress with a waistcoat I made myself from an old ripped coat. Some of the costumes other people wore were amazing. Photos forthcoming.

Girl Genius:
Fun little discussion of the comic.

2009 in film:
These panels are always fun. There's a discussion, then the panelists give a vote out of 5, then the audience gives a general opinion (recorded as :) :( :/ etc)

The Speed of Science:
Interesting discussion about the way science actually works vs how it is portrayed in fiction. Many scientists used it as an opportunity to vent.

Torchwood:
Interesting and wide ranging discussion. Some very cute vids I had somehow not seen (plus some I had). I think I let my grumpiness at the show vent a little at the panelists, sorry about that.

Steampunk:
Only saw the very end of this. If I hadn't have been saving my spoons for the next panel I would have said something in response to the squee at how much fun it is to imagine yourself as a gentleman scientist or corset wearing lady with no apparent acknowledgement of all the people crushed underfoot by that lifestyle (except for some vague acknowledgement of the rigid gender roles).

Lone Genius:
Pretty much as in my notes plus my copanelist's(*) actual point, about scientists who can do everything, some ranting about Anathem from me and more scientists telling grumpy anecdotes :)

Swancon 2011 Launch:
Looks good!

Let's go Fangirling:
I nearly went to the "Top SF&F Movies" panel since it sounded cool and tommmo put so much work into it, but decided I was more in the mood for fangirling. Despite it being about the hot ladies of sf the audience was almost all female (for a while the only guy was a 16 yr old boy whose mother frowned if he said anything inappropriate) This was fun, adding a "have a beer with them" option to the "Marry, shag or cliff" options made it much easier to categorise people.

Star Trek: Chat Time
I was Very Sleepy and had to bail halfway through, but I vaguely recall an interesting and fun conversation.

WASFF AGM
My lord, the bylaw discussion did go on. I have every respect for those who have the attention span for such discussions but my brain started melting so I ducked out for most of it and went back for the voting. Both would I think have made for good con comms, congrats to DoomCon.

A Touch of Strange: Theodore Sturgeon:
A very small number of fans squeeing about this great and under-appreciated writer.

SFF and Romance
So it turns out that if I nearly run a panel then decide to let someone else run it instead I shouldn't go, since when they inevitably take it in a different direction I'll sit there feeling grumpy that they're doing it wrong. Other than my irrational possessiveness this was fairly enjoyable. I found myself in the very odd position of the lone voice defending Twilight for a while which was uncomfortable (I despise the books too! I just don't despise all the fans!), especially since the panelist who'd take charge felt very unsympathetic to my POV. In my besiged-feeling grumpiness I talked over miss_kittylix which was very rude, especially since her POV isn't what I disagreeing with (which was the idea that ANYONE reading Twilight must automatically think it's a well written book with no problematic aspects)

And then we went home. Phew!

(*)I'm not sure if I should use the legal name as on the program, or the username they will plausibly reply to this post with.