Swancon panels 2

[alias_sqbr]

Great women in comics
Recs (good female characters): Birds of Prey (Gail Simone run), Dykes to watch out for, Promethea, Marvel "Heralds", Yu+Me dream(*), Platinum Grit, Azumanga Daioh, Rapunzel's revenge, Girl Genius, Digger, Plain Janes, Fruits Basket, Polly and the Pirates, Batgirl, Batwoman Elegy
Other things which came up as interesting: Runaways, Darths and Droids

New Who
I didn't take any notes during this. It was ok, but a bit unrelentingly positive for my dark shrivelled critical heart. People said some interesting things and I have entirely forgotten what they were :) After I left for another panel cameronm apparently tried to persuade some people that "But he had such a beautiful story" is not actually a counterargument to "The only real female character was literally fridged".

This Spaceship has cooties (feminism and sff)

• Sara Douglas paved the way for a lot of Aussie female fantasy authors, women in other countries less lucky.
  
• Viola's bookshelf: Sajbrfem swapped all the "he"s and "she"s in public domain books, suddenly you notice how many of the background characters are male (baristas etc), even in books which do well gender wise with main characters.
  
• One kickass female character surrounded by men vs lots of different type of female characters, including every day people.
  

Emotion and attachment in video games

• Things which make you attached to stuff: Good writing, feeling like your decisions matter, music, character design, having invested time and energy.
  
• People get attached to guns that they won in an important battle or have just carried a long time and will refuse to upgrade to something better.
  
• When your character feels like an extension of yourself and makes some horrible decision you either wouldn't make, weren't expecting, or which has unexpected consequences, it can be really upsetting.
  
• Brendan says: play Ico and Shadow of the Colossus (he said this several times :))
  
• Sophie says: play Bioware games :D
  

Politics of fanworks
It was very late. I wrote about some tangential thoughts I had here.
A list of the fanworks shown, plus some others.

Swancon 2013 bid party
My first bid party ever! I did not take notes but it was fun for the little while I managed to stay :)

And now: today's panels!

Conversation with Artists: Technique Lisa Rye, Christina Lorenz, Nancy Lorenz, Christopher Phillips, two other people who's names I've forgotten.
Several of the artists from the art show went through the techniques used in some of their pieces. This was fascinating, and afterwards I went to the show and got a brand new appreciation for their art. Christopher was a cool contrast to all the people talking about gauche or photoshop layering etc, since he hand codes mathematical equations to render 3D objects :)

I then spent the whole middle of the day chatting to various people. Including emilly, who I met yesterday and said she might pop through here *waves*.

Gynaecon discussion on accessibility, food and food ethics
The Hyatt is appalling for accessibility, people with wheelchairs or prams etc have to either go up steep "no pedestrian access" roads or walk almost a full circuit of the building. So we discussed who we should complain to (emma_in_dream is looking into it) and then had a more general discussion about accessibility at cons. Then there was a fairly separate discussion about ways to bypass the supermarket chains. I didn't really take notes, this is just what I remember.

• Expensive hotels make it difficult for people who need to rest but have limited funds
  
• Nowhere to get diabetic friendly food
  
• Slow cookers sound very convenient :)
  
• A family room for the kids has been incredibly helpful
  
• A quiet room with maybe a microwave and somewhere to sit and perhaps have a shower?
  
• Need more continuity of information, persuade one committee only to have to start again with the next
  
• I brought up the fact that microphones, printouts would be helpful to many people, and that a lot of people will have simply given up asking for necessary accessibility requirements and will thus either have a vastly inferior experience or not come at all. Not sure how we can fix this or how much the con can make a big difference with small easy changes, but I'm sure there must be some. Am going to ponder.
  
• Free fruit is good!
  
• Local ethical food choices: Mimsbrook Biodynamic / Organic Food Store (community supported agriculture). Less ethical etc but cheaper: Aussie farmers direct.
  
• Apparently the fairtrade chocolate people won't support free trade farmers using a mechanised system.
  

And then we got room service which was relatively cheap for this hotel and nicely restful, and then I went to the masquerade (cameronm and I were a genderswapped Eleventh Doctor and Amy. Michael Cogan very kindly lent me a fez he had borrowed off someone else which helped immensely. Thanks to him and whoever actually owns it :)). Photos forthcoming. The costumes were pretty cool, and I managed to hang about for a moderate while before getting tired. I even helped volunteer for setup, tying balloons for a while.

(*)though there are skeevy race issues that really took away from the story for me.