Wiscon is done!!
May. 26th, 2020 04:12 pmIt ended very sharply since they made the discord read-only at local midnight (my lunch time, a few hours ago) I've joined a few related discords, though, and had a bunch of new people follow me who I am slowly checking out one by one (if I do this too quickly I just go UGH TOO HARD and never subscribe to anyone).
Anyway, the con was a lot of fun! *waves to everyone I saw there, and also anyone I didn't* I have one more panel to write up and then I'll do a panels post, but in the meantime here's some links I had opened in tabs and stuff.
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Anyway, the con was a lot of fun! *waves to everyone I saw there, and also anyone I didn't* I have one more panel to write up and then I'll do a panels post, but in the meantime here's some links I had opened in tabs and stuff.
( Read more... )
Tags:
- cons,
- disability,
- dreamwidth,
- fandom,
- indigenous,
- life,
- links,
- me,
- podcasts,
- wiscon
I am at Wiscon AS WE SPEAK
May. 24th, 2020 02:05 pmI have been having a lot of fun at the online version of the feminist scifi convention Wiscon this weekend. I was worried I'd be asleep during all the interesting stuff, but even though I've had to miss most of the panels I've still been to a couple and had some great conversations in the discord. Including meeting some new dreamwidth people *waves*
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Wiscon Online
May. 10th, 2020 08:41 pmWiscon is open for online registration until the 20th.
I got the free ticket because I am pretty sure timezones mean I won't be able to actually attend anything (which is fair enough, it was hardly designed to be an international con!), but will see.
I got the free ticket because I am pretty sure timezones mean I won't be able to actually attend anything (which is fair enough, it was hardly designed to be an international con!), but will see.
Swancon: ONLINE, and LOVE NEVER DIES
May. 1st, 2020 03:13 pmThis ANZAC weekend was the local scifi con, Swancon. And like so many recent cons, it was online.
This was an interesting experience! I was unfortunately very sleepy this weekend so wasn't up for a bunch of content I'd been looking forward to, but participated in couple of Youtube chats via Watch2gether, which were super fun. I also submitted to and checked out the online art gallery, which was a cute virtual space you could wander around.
There were also video chats, online board games, etc. There's been a bunch of discord conversations leading up to Swancon, too, and the possibility of a bookclub etc following the con.
The first thing we watched on Youtube was the Australian production of the Phantom of the Opera Sequel musical, Love Never Dies. It was very entertainingly bad, and we all ended up shipping Meg/Christine and Phantom/Raoul more than any of the canon ships.
( In which I drag Andrew Lloyd Webber for his terrible filk )
This was an interesting experience! I was unfortunately very sleepy this weekend so wasn't up for a bunch of content I'd been looking forward to, but participated in couple of Youtube chats via Watch2gether, which were super fun. I also submitted to and checked out the online art gallery, which was a cute virtual space you could wander around.
There were also video chats, online board games, etc. There's been a bunch of discord conversations leading up to Swancon, too, and the possibility of a bookclub etc following the con.
The first thing we watched on Youtube was the Australian production of the Phantom of the Opera Sequel musical, Love Never Dies. It was very entertainingly bad, and we all ended up shipping Meg/Christine and Phantom/Raoul more than any of the canon ships.
( In which I drag Andrew Lloyd Webber for his terrible filk )
Swancon 2019! Sort of!
Apr. 22nd, 2019 09:29 pmI did make it in the end, but only for the Saturday. Which was lots of fun and SO MUCH LESS EXHAUSTING than going for the whole con, so I think I'll make it my default from now on.
There's no panel notes or anything, just me rambling about my day.
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There's no panel notes or anything, just me rambling about my day.
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We're not going to swancon this year
Apr. 8th, 2019 06:59 pmThought I should mention it while I remember. (Also I just gave my self a minor burn and need a distraction, sorry if this is a bit badly worded as a result)
There's no big reason, mainly I've been finding it more of a strain on my health so we wanted to try not going and see if we regretted it. If I feel unexpectedly energetic I might take the train down for Saturday but I wouldn't count on it.
Hope you all have fun without us!
There's no big reason, mainly I've been finding it more of a strain on my health so we wanted to try not going and see if we regretted it. If I feel unexpectedly energetic I might take the train down for Saturday but I wouldn't count on it.
Hope you all have fun without us!
Swancon 2018: everything else
Apr. 3rd, 2018 09:01 pmOverall the con was pretty good, as far as I can tell based on what I saw around naps.
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Ryan Griffen is the Aboriginal creator of the highly lauded indigenous scifi show Cleverman. I haven't actually watched the show but found what he had to say really interesting anyway.
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Swancon 2017!
Apr. 18th, 2017 06:15 pmSorry to the many people I did not speak to/was vague at, I was EXTRA SPECIALLY sleepy this weekend, on the plus side all the resting I had to do means I don't actually feel that bad now.
Between all the resting I still had a pretty good time! The Metro's accessibility issues weren't as bad as I thought they'd be, and having Cam to drive me around meant the lack of nearby restaurants wasn't too big of an issue for me personally. Didn't make many panels but the ones I went to were fun, and next years con looks pretty promising. The only guest I really talked to was Joyce Chng/![[twitter.com profile]](https://p.dreamwidth.org/e0caa790ec10/-/twitter.com/favicon.ico)
jolantru but she was very nice and had interesting things to say.
I wore a they/them pronoun sticker and mentioned my genderfluidness when it was relevant, and got no negative pushback whatsoever. I think partly because a sticker on the bottom of a lanyard on a wheelchair using short person with boobs is not going to be noticed by most people, but I'm still counting it as a win.
I didn't take a lot of notes but what I have is under the cut. The con used the Grenadine event management system for the first time, it worked pretty well from my end and is reminding me of what I did.
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Between all the resting I still had a pretty good time! The Metro's accessibility issues weren't as bad as I thought they'd be, and having Cam to drive me around meant the lack of nearby restaurants wasn't too big of an issue for me personally. Didn't make many panels but the ones I went to were fun, and next years con looks pretty promising. The only guest I really talked to was Joyce Chng/
I wore a they/them pronoun sticker and mentioned my genderfluidness when it was relevant, and got no negative pushback whatsoever. I think partly because a sticker on the bottom of a lanyard on a wheelchair using short person with boobs is not going to be noticed by most people, but I'm still counting it as a win.
I didn't take a lot of notes but what I have is under the cut. The con used the Grenadine event management system for the first time, it worked pretty well from my end and is reminding me of what I did.
( Read more... )
Swancon Programming Meeting April 30
Aug. 6th, 2016 10:15 pmYes, I took a while to get around to writing this up, the important thing is I've done it now >.>
I was the only non committee member to show up, and they were very interested in a wider variety of suggestions. So contact them with ideas! Especially, I assume, relating to the newly announced international guest Wesley Chu.
Games/audience participation etc type stuff:
Other kinds of panels:
More information about the convention
I was the only non committee member to show up, and they were very interested in a wider variety of suggestions. So contact them with ideas! Especially, I assume, relating to the newly announced international guest Wesley Chu.
Games/audience participation etc type stuff:
- Johann Sebastian Joust
- Virtual Reality demo like the one this year by Stirfire Studios
- Workshops: quilting, locks, miniature painting
- Competitive team based problem solving thing?
- Play Hitchhikers Guide To The Galaxy game by audience vote
Other kinds of panels:
- Anime history, recs
- Dr Who
- Non Western/English language Scifi beyond Anime: Miraculous Ladybug etc
- Video games discussion
- Late night Devina (fan guest)
- Classics we never saw
- Grant's history of Disney continued? If he wants?
- Fantasy panels that suit Traci Harding's themes
- Can a scifi movie stay true to an interesting scifi premise all the way through but also be exciting with lots of explosions?
- Time travel
- Endangered Animals
- Space Ship Yamoto
- Point and Click computer games
- Women sent back in time: the genre.
- Old franchises changing to suit new times eg getting more diverse
- British Scifi Humour
- Metaphors politically used for explosions (what does this mean, past self??)
More information about the convention
Random things
May. 2nd, 2016 06:20 pmFeeling motivated but sore, so, a post about various minor things.
First: SOON got (positively) reviewed by PC Power Play Australia!! It got ONE WHOLE EXTRA SALE (which was![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
loic, seeing my post about it on Facebook but shh)
Second: yesterday I went to the Maylands festival and it was super fun, I had fancy meat from the gourmet butcher and fancy toasted marshmallows, and a baby goat at the petting zoo fell asleep in my lap omg it was SO CUTE. At first it was all "wtf who are you" but then it decided I was a friend and then it slowly calmed down and went to sleep. It was all brown with a cute little black nose and floppy ears. Having animals at petting zoos sit happily in my lap is an unexpected upside of the wheelchair. I smsed Cam (who was asleep when I left) that there were some nice looking fancy hotdogs (his weakness :D) so he came down and we had fun walking around together. The accessibility was unnecessarily poor, though, they blocked curb cuts and footpaths in a few places meaning I had to take complex detours a few times to get to things an able bodied person could just step to.
Third...uh...I had a weird pain in my side again? But then it went away? FUN TIMES.
Oh wait! Yeah! I went to the Swancon programming meeting, it was pretty good but I was the only non committee member there so am very glad I came to add a different POV. They want more diverse POVs so contact them with ideas for panels! Especially book/writing/academic/social justicey/cutting edge fandom stuff, since their strengths seem to be more older anime/tv/movie fandoms and fun interactive stuff. I took some notes I'll try and write up when less sleepy.
First: SOON got (positively) reviewed by PC Power Play Australia!! It got ONE WHOLE EXTRA SALE (which was
loic, seeing my post about it on Facebook but shh)Second: yesterday I went to the Maylands festival and it was super fun, I had fancy meat from the gourmet butcher and fancy toasted marshmallows, and a baby goat at the petting zoo fell asleep in my lap omg it was SO CUTE. At first it was all "wtf who are you" but then it decided I was a friend and then it slowly calmed down and went to sleep. It was all brown with a cute little black nose and floppy ears. Having animals at petting zoos sit happily in my lap is an unexpected upside of the wheelchair. I smsed Cam (who was asleep when I left) that there were some nice looking fancy hotdogs (his weakness :D) so he came down and we had fun walking around together. The accessibility was unnecessarily poor, though, they blocked curb cuts and footpaths in a few places meaning I had to take complex detours a few times to get to things an able bodied person could just step to.
Third...uh...I had a weird pain in my side again? But then it went away? FUN TIMES.
Oh wait! Yeah! I went to the Swancon programming meeting, it was pretty good but I was the only non committee member there so am very glad I came to add a different POV. They want more diverse POVs so contact them with ideas for panels! Especially book/writing/academic/social justicey/cutting edge fandom stuff, since their strengths seem to be more older anime/tv/movie fandoms and fun interactive stuff. I took some notes I'll try and write up when less sleepy.
Swancon 2016: everything else!
Mar. 31st, 2016 11:00 pmThings I was recced:
The Swancon community is apparently 37% male, 50% female and 13% non binary. The registration table this year offered neat little pronoun stickers to put at the bottom of your badge and there were unisex toilets.
Stirfire Studios ran a demonstration of a game they're writing for the HTC Vive Virtual Reality headset/controller, I was one of a long line of people who got to play it for a few minutes. It was SUPER FUN, very immersive. They got me to stay in my wheelchair to see how well that could work, the answer being "not very well" (I couldn't reach anything high up) but that was fine just for playing around. Also I was longer at the front than the system expected so I banged my footplate into a wall before the "stop walking!" warning grid came on. I've had a few interesting conversations with them about accessibility, am curious to see where that goes.
I only stayed for the very beginning of the masquerade and had no costume but everyone else looked great.
I did a clay animal making activity in the family room which was HEAPS of fun, I was a sought after artisan of little eyes since the children had trouble making them neatly.
Non Violent Video Games
So You Want To Make A Video Game
( Various Jane Espenson notes, Science Doesn't Work That Way, Trailer Park, Queer characters: Tokenism, realism and support )
- Little Witch Story and it's creator's twitter
- Vampire Saga hidden object game
- Space Team cooperative game.
- Daniel De Lorne Local author of m/m vampire romance
The Swancon community is apparently 37% male, 50% female and 13% non binary. The registration table this year offered neat little pronoun stickers to put at the bottom of your badge and there were unisex toilets.
Stirfire Studios ran a demonstration of a game they're writing for the HTC Vive Virtual Reality headset/controller, I was one of a long line of people who got to play it for a few minutes. It was SUPER FUN, very immersive. They got me to stay in my wheelchair to see how well that could work, the answer being "not very well" (I couldn't reach anything high up) but that was fine just for playing around. Also I was longer at the front than the system expected so I banged my footplate into a wall before the "stop walking!" warning grid came on. I've had a few interesting conversations with them about accessibility, am curious to see where that goes.
I only stayed for the very beginning of the masquerade and had no costume but everyone else looked great.
I did a clay animal making activity in the family room which was HEAPS of fun, I was a sought after artisan of little eyes since the children had trouble making them neatly.
Non Violent Video Games
So You Want To Make A Video Game
( Various Jane Espenson notes, Science Doesn't Work That Way, Trailer Park, Queer characters: Tokenism, realism and support )
So that was fun! And I am predictably tired, it has taken a few days of napping and playing Stardew Valley before I felt up to poking at the notes I took. I managed to achieve all my goals: my panels went well, talked to friends, met new people, attended other people's fun panels, saw some cool costumes, spoke to some of the guests.
The notes all blur together, so I'm going to start from the beginning and see what structure emerges.
( Speak for 3 minutes about local fannish events, Authors Like Lois McMaster Bujold )
The notes all blur together, so I'm going to start from the beginning and see what structure emerges.
( Speak for 3 minutes about local fannish events, Authors Like Lois McMaster Bujold )
Perth Gaming Festival this Saturday
Nov. 26th, 2015 02:55 pmDid I mention I'm going to the Perth Gaming Festival? I'm even exhibiting (from 3-5) and being on a panel (at 1).
My rough panel notes for Diversity in Gaming, feedback welcome!
My rough panel notes for Diversity in Gaming, feedback welcome!
Swancon pt 2
Apr. 12th, 2015 12:08 amFirst, my Dragon Age Inquisitor cosplay.
Second, some random recs:
the movie Joint Security Area
Safety Not Guaranteed
What if my Baby Is A Squib Subtle, dark, Harry Potter fanfic that pokes at the squib=disability thing
Across the Nightingale Floor by Lianne Hearn (next year's guest)
Husbands (by Jane Espenson, ditto, omg)
Third, panel notes:
Has Science Fiction Changed Society?
The general consensus was that it reflects existing changes and can inspire/help individuals, but is rarely on the forefront of any change. It's really bad at predicting the future so not much good at preparing for or inspiring it. I might write up the rest of my notes but while I enjoyed the panel none of it seems worth the effort.
John Scalzi Guest of Honour Speech
The meaning of life is unverifiable.
Poison Elves
I went to this by accident but have always been vaguely curious after seeing the comics in shops, and was amused to discover the hero's name is Lusipher. I wonder if there's a Saetan too.
Science in Speculative Fiction
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Second, some random recs:
the movie Joint Security Area
Safety Not Guaranteed
What if my Baby Is A Squib Subtle, dark, Harry Potter fanfic that pokes at the squib=disability thing
Across the Nightingale Floor by Lianne Hearn (next year's guest)
Husbands (by Jane Espenson, ditto, omg)
Third, panel notes:
Has Science Fiction Changed Society?
The general consensus was that it reflects existing changes and can inspire/help individuals, but is rarely on the forefront of any change. It's really bad at predicting the future so not much good at preparing for or inspiring it. I might write up the rest of my notes but while I enjoyed the panel none of it seems worth the effort.
John Scalzi Guest of Honour Speech
The meaning of life is unverifiable.
Poison Elves
I went to this by accident but have always been vaguely curious after seeing the comics in shops, and was amused to discover the hero's name is Lusipher. I wonder if there's a Saetan too.
Science in Speculative Fiction
( Read more... )
Last panel of the con! I may post some photos but otherwise I am DONE.
Let's get Serious: Games are changing, get involved!
Jane Cocks [University of Sunshine Coast], Izzy Gramp [Independent], Dan Monceaux [Danimations Pty Ltd], Amani Naseem [Copenhagen Game Collective], Paul Stapelberg [Well Placed Cactus]
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Let's get Serious: Games are changing, get involved!
Jane Cocks [University of Sunshine Coast], Izzy Gramp [Independent], Dan Monceaux [Danimations Pty Ltd], Amani Naseem [Copenhagen Game Collective], Paul Stapelberg [Well Placed Cactus]
( Read more... )
PAX AU notes: Women in Video Games
Nov. 7th, 2014 11:39 pmWomen in Video Games
Rebecca Fernandez [Chapter Leader, IGDA Sydney], Mary King [Digital Marketing Consultant, Contractor], Nicole Stark [Co-Director, Disparity Games], James Dominguez [Journalist, Fairfax Digital], Tara Brannigan [Community Relationship Manager, PikPok], Leigh Harris [Director, Flat Earth Games]
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Rebecca Fernandez [Chapter Leader, IGDA Sydney], Mary King [Digital Marketing Consultant, Contractor], Nicole Stark [Co-Director, Disparity Games], James Dominguez [Journalist, Fairfax Digital], Tara Brannigan [Community Relationship Manager, PikPok], Leigh Harris [Director, Flat Earth Games]
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