Chessiecon 2018 Con Report
Nov. 30th, 2018 09:30 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
child_of_the_airLast weekend, I went to Chessiecon, a small science fiction convention held in Timonium, just north of Baltimore, at the suggestion of my author-friend, Ruthanna Emrys, and her wife, who were going for the first time this year because their friend, Jo Walton, was the guest of honor. In theory the convention gives "particular attention to materials of and by women creators," though that wasn't particularly evident to me from the choice of panelists on most of the panels.
I had a very relaxing weekend, which I certainly needed, and I did enjoy most of the things I attended at the convention, even though I slept through rather more of them than I'd planned to.
Also, I was impressed at how trans-friendly the convention was. There were pronoun (she, he, they, and fill-in-the-blank) ribbons to put on member badges, and there was a non-gendered bathroom set up for people who weren't comfortable with the hotel's gendered bathrooms. I wore a skirt basically the whole time, though, and used the women's restrooms regularly without getting any weird looks.
Friday
I hadn't quite realized how close Timonium is to College Park when there's no rush hour traffic: I was able to drive there in about an hour, which was a good deal faster than I expected. After checking in to the Red Roof Inn next door, where I'd decided to stay because it was cheaper, I headed over to the Red Lion Inn to check in to the convention. Conveniently, I ran into Ruthanna and her wife, the only people I knew at the convention, in the check-in line. We sat around talking in the lobby and they introduced me to some of their fannish friends while we waited for the programming to start.
After the Unforgivable Villains panel, I had dinner with Ruthanna and her wife. We'd wanted to go to a filk concert by Benjamin Newman after dinner, but it was rescheduled because of a lack of heat in the room it was to be held in, so we sat in the lobby and talked more. I ended up having a very long phone conversation with a friend in Australia. (Time zones make it really hard to get in touch with him, so in the middle of a convention was the best we could manage for catching up.) Finally, I went to the bardic circle filk room and listened to music for an hour or so before going to my room to get some sleep.
Among other songs, some of which I recognized, I was introduced to Sara Thomsen's "Somewhere to Begin" by a rather cute Irish guy playing a guitar. I really liked "Somewhere to Begin," and recommend listening to it...conveniently, it's on YouTube.
Saturday
On Saturday morning, I managed to make it back to the convention in time for University of Maryland paleontology professor Tom Holtz's talk on "The Latest in the World of Dinosaurs." The talk was really good, and I took extensive notes, which will hopefully be the basis for a separate Dreamwidth post soon.
I'd wanted to go to a number of additional panels on Saturday afternoon, but I found that I was just far too sleepy, so I went back to my room to sleep instead. Getting several hours of sleep seemed to help a lot, and I managed to have dinner with Ruthanna, her wife, another of her housemates, and Jo Walton. It was an enjoyable dinner, and I got the impression that Jo Walton didn't actually find me annoying, which was really exciting.
After dinner, I spent a while in the bardic circle filk room listening to more singing and, at midnight, participated in Chessiecon's annual singing of the Hallelujah Chorus: although I'm tone deaf and a horrible singer, I figured that with at least fifty people involved, no one would notice. I sang the alto part in my usual falsetto: it made me really happy to be in a vocal section that was essentially all women.
Sunday
I clearly was in a lot of need of sleep on this trip: I ended up sleeping in on Sunday and only making it to the last five minutes or so of a panel on "Badass Women in History" that sounds like it was really good.
After that last panel, I think everyone was pretty badly burnt out. I had lunch at a seafood restaurant with Ruthanna and her wife, and went back to DC for my afternoon tutoring appointments.
I had a very relaxing weekend, which I certainly needed, and I did enjoy most of the things I attended at the convention, even though I slept through rather more of them than I'd planned to.
Also, I was impressed at how trans-friendly the convention was. There were pronoun (she, he, they, and fill-in-the-blank) ribbons to put on member badges, and there was a non-gendered bathroom set up for people who weren't comfortable with the hotel's gendered bathrooms. I wore a skirt basically the whole time, though, and used the women's restrooms regularly without getting any weird looks.
Friday
I hadn't quite realized how close Timonium is to College Park when there's no rush hour traffic: I was able to drive there in about an hour, which was a good deal faster than I expected. After checking in to the Red Roof Inn next door, where I'd decided to stay because it was cheaper, I headed over to the Red Lion Inn to check in to the convention. Conveniently, I ran into Ruthanna and her wife, the only people I knew at the convention, in the check-in line. We sat around talking in the lobby and they introduced me to some of their fannish friends while we waited for the programming to start.
Jo Walton Reading
Despite the fact I've heard a lot about her from Ruthanna and her family, I'd never actually read anything by Jo Walton before. The upcoming (in May) novel she read the beginning of, Lent, sounded wonderful, and I definitely need to read it when it comes out. It's historical fantasy, set in Medieval Italy in a world where Catholic theology--and demonology--are empirically correct.
Despite the fact I've heard a lot about her from Ruthanna and her family, I'd never actually read anything by Jo Walton before. The upcoming (in May) novel she read the beginning of, Lent, sounded wonderful, and I definitely need to read it when it comes out. It's historical fantasy, set in Medieval Italy in a world where Catholic theology--and demonology--are empirically correct.
Unforgivable Villains with Understandable Motives
This panel, which had Jo Walton, Ruthanna Emrys, Heather Rose Jones, Karen Osborne, and Martin Wiley on it and was moderated by Don Sakers, was pretty good. Unfortunately, writing this close to a week later, I don't actually recall that many of the details, but there was some discussion of the difference between "forgiveness" and "redemption," and whether understanding someone's motives actually implied any sort of sympathy for them.
This panel, which had Jo Walton, Ruthanna Emrys, Heather Rose Jones, Karen Osborne, and Martin Wiley on it and was moderated by Don Sakers, was pretty good. Unfortunately, writing this close to a week later, I don't actually recall that many of the details, but there was some discussion of the difference between "forgiveness" and "redemption," and whether understanding someone's motives actually implied any sort of sympathy for them.
After the Unforgivable Villains panel, I had dinner with Ruthanna and her wife. We'd wanted to go to a filk concert by Benjamin Newman after dinner, but it was rescheduled because of a lack of heat in the room it was to be held in, so we sat in the lobby and talked more. I ended up having a very long phone conversation with a friend in Australia. (Time zones make it really hard to get in touch with him, so in the middle of a convention was the best we could manage for catching up.) Finally, I went to the bardic circle filk room and listened to music for an hour or so before going to my room to get some sleep.
Among other songs, some of which I recognized, I was introduced to Sara Thomsen's "Somewhere to Begin" by a rather cute Irish guy playing a guitar. I really liked "Somewhere to Begin," and recommend listening to it...conveniently, it's on YouTube.
Saturday
On Saturday morning, I managed to make it back to the convention in time for University of Maryland paleontology professor Tom Holtz's talk on "The Latest in the World of Dinosaurs." The talk was really good, and I took extensive notes, which will hopefully be the basis for a separate Dreamwidth post soon.
Walking to Mordor: A Panel about Pacing and Time Compression
This panel, like all the panels I attended, was moderated by Don Sakers, and had Elektra Hammond, Julie Holderman, Steve Kozeniewski, and Jo Walton on it. It was probably more targeted for people who write fiction than for people like me who don't, but there was some interesting discussion about why "random encounters" work well in D&D but not in fiction, and ways to imply a long journey while eliding actual discussion of the day-to-day minutiae of travel.
Jo Walton also mentioned a essay she published on Tor.com a number of years ago called "Faster Than Light At Any Speed" about the fact that faster-than-light drives in science fiction very commonly follow the same basic set of assumptions (will require large ships that can't land on planetary surfaces; will take weeks or months to get between star systems). I think there are some explanations for this, including the fact that you can't have travel or communication between star systems be too fast if you want to maintain the impression of them being completely different worlds with different cultures. But it's certainly something to think about.
Group Discussion: Steven Universe
The group discussion of Steven Universe was quite small, and I was surprised that I was only one of two people (out of seven or so total) who didn't have grey hair. It was certainly quite different from my default expectations of Steven Universe fandom based on the fans in my social circle, who are mostly younger than me and almost all non-cis. The discussion was kind of interesting, although I felt like people didn't take the fact that the diamonds are in fact fascist dictators as seriously as they should have.
Jo Walton Interview
The Steven Universe discussion was followed by an interview with Jo Walton. I probably didn't get as much out of it as I would have if I'd read some of her books, but hearing about them led me to decide that a number of them needed to go on my Goodreads to-read list, so perhaps I'll eventually manage to get caught up.
This panel, like all the panels I attended, was moderated by Don Sakers, and had Elektra Hammond, Julie Holderman, Steve Kozeniewski, and Jo Walton on it. It was probably more targeted for people who write fiction than for people like me who don't, but there was some interesting discussion about why "random encounters" work well in D&D but not in fiction, and ways to imply a long journey while eliding actual discussion of the day-to-day minutiae of travel.
Jo Walton also mentioned a essay she published on Tor.com a number of years ago called "Faster Than Light At Any Speed" about the fact that faster-than-light drives in science fiction very commonly follow the same basic set of assumptions (will require large ships that can't land on planetary surfaces; will take weeks or months to get between star systems). I think there are some explanations for this, including the fact that you can't have travel or communication between star systems be too fast if you want to maintain the impression of them being completely different worlds with different cultures. But it's certainly something to think about.
Group Discussion: Steven Universe
The group discussion of Steven Universe was quite small, and I was surprised that I was only one of two people (out of seven or so total) who didn't have grey hair. It was certainly quite different from my default expectations of Steven Universe fandom based on the fans in my social circle, who are mostly younger than me and almost all non-cis. The discussion was kind of interesting, although I felt like people didn't take the fact that the diamonds are in fact fascist dictators as seriously as they should have.
Jo Walton Interview
The Steven Universe discussion was followed by an interview with Jo Walton. I probably didn't get as much out of it as I would have if I'd read some of her books, but hearing about them led me to decide that a number of them needed to go on my Goodreads to-read list, so perhaps I'll eventually manage to get caught up.
I'd wanted to go to a number of additional panels on Saturday afternoon, but I found that I was just far too sleepy, so I went back to my room to sleep instead. Getting several hours of sleep seemed to help a lot, and I managed to have dinner with Ruthanna, her wife, another of her housemates, and Jo Walton. It was an enjoyable dinner, and I got the impression that Jo Walton didn't actually find me annoying, which was really exciting.
After dinner, I spent a while in the bardic circle filk room listening to more singing and, at midnight, participated in Chessiecon's annual singing of the Hallelujah Chorus: although I'm tone deaf and a horrible singer, I figured that with at least fifty people involved, no one would notice. I sang the alto part in my usual falsetto: it made me really happy to be in a vocal section that was essentially all women.
Sunday
I clearly was in a lot of need of sleep on this trip: I ended up sleeping in on Sunday and only making it to the last five minutes or so of a panel on "Badass Women in History" that sounds like it was really good.
They're the Protagonist, But are They a Role Model?
This panel was...a disaster. It wasn't really the moderator--Don Sakers' fault, though he could have done a lot more to fix things--but the only thing that salvaged it at all was an attempt by Jo Walton to get things under control. Other than her, the panel consisted of three white men who seemed to be trying to be "edgy" in problematic ways, such as suggesting that it was important to be able to empathize with Nazis' motivations, as opposed to only understanding them to avoid writing two-dimensional cut-outs.
The biggest problem, though, was panelist Stephen Kozeniewski, who said that he thought it was a universal experience that when someone cuts you off in traffic you get the urge to follow them home and kill them in front of their family (or possibly kill their whole family; different people heard different versions), and that the only reason he (and he assumed everyone) doesn't do this is fear of getting caught and going to jail.
After that, everything kind of went to hell. Jo Walton pointed out that no, that's not a normal reaction, it's a really disturbing one, and Don Sakers tried to blame it on the patriarchy and American culture being so violent, and Stephen Kozeniewski spent some time trying to defend the normality of this.
Besides that, there was one additional bit of awkward that wasn't actually the panelists' fault: an older, white woman in the audience commented that she thought that the loss of "traditional religion" is why our culture is so immoral today.
This panel was...a disaster. It wasn't really the moderator--Don Sakers' fault, though he could have done a lot more to fix things--but the only thing that salvaged it at all was an attempt by Jo Walton to get things under control. Other than her, the panel consisted of three white men who seemed to be trying to be "edgy" in problematic ways, such as suggesting that it was important to be able to empathize with Nazis' motivations, as opposed to only understanding them to avoid writing two-dimensional cut-outs.
The biggest problem, though, was panelist Stephen Kozeniewski, who said that he thought it was a universal experience that when someone cuts you off in traffic you get the urge to follow them home and kill them in front of their family (or possibly kill their whole family; different people heard different versions), and that the only reason he (and he assumed everyone) doesn't do this is fear of getting caught and going to jail.
After that, everything kind of went to hell. Jo Walton pointed out that no, that's not a normal reaction, it's a really disturbing one, and Don Sakers tried to blame it on the patriarchy and American culture being so violent, and Stephen Kozeniewski spent some time trying to defend the normality of this.
Besides that, there was one additional bit of awkward that wasn't actually the panelists' fault: an older, white woman in the audience commented that she thought that the loss of "traditional religion" is why our culture is so immoral today.
After that last panel, I think everyone was pretty badly burnt out. I had lunch at a seafood restaurant with Ruthanna and her wife, and went back to DC for my afternoon tutoring appointments.
no subject
Date: 2018-11-30 07:34 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2018-11-30 08:44 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2018-12-01 10:14 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2018-12-02 03:46 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2018-11-30 11:22 pm (UTC)1) Good for Ms. Walton for saying what needed to be said.
2) It must be hideously embarrassing to discover - and when you're speaking on a panel! - that you're on the higher end of humanity's ever-present desire to do evil.
3) The best thing to do in such a situation is to keep quiet till you have an opportunity to discuss this with someone you trust, possibly a professional.
4) Alternatively, you can keep arguing that this is a universal impulse, until everyone at the con has decided not to invite you and your road-rage-inducing car to any future cons.
(On a completely different topic: I lived in Greenbelt for forty years. My father taught in the English department at UMD College Park.)
no subject
Date: 2018-12-01 03:28 am (UTC)Also, huh. I live in College Park, but teach up at UMBC, which always confuses everyone, and is admittedly a questionable life choice.
no subject
Date: 2018-12-08 04:00 am (UTC)"I live in College Park, but teach up at UMBC, which always confuses everyone, and is admittedly a questionable life choice."
Not unknown, though. My ex lives 50 miles from his workplace.
I had a high school teacher who lived in Montgomery County (where the taxes are high) and taught in Prince George's County (where the salaries are low). Now that is illogical, as he readily admitted.
no subject
Date: 2018-12-08 12:51 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2018-12-09 03:40 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2018-12-09 03:46 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2018-12-10 01:00 am (UTC)Tell me about it. The Powers That Be which run the bus system in this county just eliminated the bus stop next to my PCP, my credit union, and the only two supermarkets in town. ("How shall we improve the bus system?" "I know! Let's make it impossible for poor people in Havre de Grace to shop for groceries!")
no subject
Date: 2018-12-10 01:41 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2018-12-10 04:47 am (UTC)Except for commuter buses, the bus system is local and really messed up. The county seat is twenty minutes away from my town, but it takes three times as long as that to go there by bus. Throughout the system, there's no weekend service or evening service.
I haven't looked yet to see whether they've made any genuine improvements with the latest changes. I certainly hope so. But this county's bus system makes me long for the days of Metrobus.