First-Person Narrator

I uploaded my WisCon photos to my brand-new Flickr account, so that I could put them in the WisCon31 pool. There's some good stuff in there, including a lovely series of pictures of Karen and Rachel squashing me while I was trying to read Bitch.

Today, I poked around and found another picture of me as Barda without my cape in the way. Clicky! I dunno why I look so smug in every shot. Must've been the costume effecting my mind or something.

I haven't uploaded any pictures of WisCon 31 from my own camera, but there's a handy collection of photos by other folk on Flickr. I'll link to a few of the ones I'm in that give me a particular chuckle.

This is my back. I guess I'm hunching over a little to make the text show better? I dunno. I don't really remember posing for that one.

This is my front! I do remember posing for that one. I look unusually well-endowed for me, so I think it is definitely one of my favoritest pictures evar, now, even if the shirt is on a little crooked.

These are my... thighs... I believe that this was shot while kphoebe (one thigh also pictured) was helping me get my wig on for the Big Barda costume I wore to the Fancy Dress party. Why, I could not tell you.

This is me with some awesome folks! I like this picture particularly because you can see a bit more of my costume than in most others that people took, even if my Megarod placement is slightly suspect. My cape kept falling down and covering everything, alas. But there are loads more pictures of all of us (including morchades, who isn't in this one) in the photo pool, so go check 'em out.

Nothing makes me feel better at the end of a long, exhausting week than spending money.

Okay, so that's lies. There are lots of things that make me feel better than that. Like getting a foot massage from Jimmy, say, or eating ice cream.

But letting myself buy things I've coveted for a while does feel good, especially when I can kinda vaguely justify it as a virtuous purchase in some way. Buying cafepress stuff which advertises and supports some of my favorite websites for the express purpose of wearing it at WisCon is kinda like the holy grail of justifiable shopping. Huzzah!

I picked me up one of these (in blue), and one of these, and a few other neat-o things. Now, to obsessively check the mailbox every day for the next week or so...

I just dropped about a hundred dollars on various things that will, hopefully, advance my career as a writer.

Man, do I ever hope that works out...

I need to remember to grab my calendar book and fill in contest deadlines again, too. So far, entering contests hasn't gotten me anywhere, but a lot of them are free, and it's somehow less demoralizing to not win a contest than to get a rejection letter. I think of it as a weird sort of practice for more serious submitting.

Completely unrelatedly, ChaYon Ryu tonight was very fun. I got to do a three-person sparring round with Sam and Jeremy (a first dan blackbelt who is coming back to train with us again after a brief hiatus), and it was great - no injuries or anything, but with plenty of challenge and opportunity to do fun, flashy techniques with solid force. I came close to kicking Sam in the groin on accident, at one point, when he moved in a direction I wasn't anticipating, but it worked out. I pulled the kick as much as I could, and then he caught my foot, anyway, so it was all good.

Oh, I did stomp Jeremy's foot after a bad recovery from a side kick.

So I guess there was one injury. But it was really minor. Not even any blood!

Previous reports: “Láadan vs. tlhIngan Hol: Differential Diffusion of Created Languages”
“Women's vs. Men's Magic in Fantasy”
“Never The Hero: Girls in Genre Literature”
“An Agent’s Point of View”

After the agent panel, I went to listen to the Lady Poetesses from Hell (who were fantastic, btw), and then seeksadventure and I got to sit together at the “Feminist Romance” panel. The moderator was Jennifer Stevenson, and the panelists were Emma Bull (so awesome!), Stephanie Burgis, Cynthia Gonsalves, Nina Kiriki Hoffman, and Lyda A. Morehouse (who I have a bit of a crush on, now).

This panel was for discussion of whether romance novels can be feminist (pretty much everybody seemed to think that yes, they can), and what a feminist romance novel would look like. I had hoped, personally, for a little more discussion of cross-genre romance (since I write a lot of romance/fantasy), but it was a very entertaining panel even though it didn’t touch on that area very much.

At the top of my page of notes on that panel, I have scrawled:

Hero = oral sex

Which should give you an idea of the general tone of the discussion… ;-)
( Read more... )

Previous reports: “Láadan vs. tlhIngan Hol: Differential Diffusion of Created Languages”
“Women's vs. Men's Magic in Fantasy”

I was too zonked for the rest of the Friday night panels, and overslept Saturday morning. Consequently, the next panel that I attended at WisCon was “Never the Hero: Girls in Genre Literature”. It was moderated by Sharyn November (who took control from Delia Sherman in a decisive pre-panel coup), and featured Delia Sherman, Brian Attebery, Veronica L. Schanoes, and Jane Yolen.

My notes for this panel basically consist of a recommended reading list, but I can reconstruct the gist of the discussion from memory.

The discussion went around quite a bit, but the ultimate main topic was that there are lots of female leads in fantasy for young readers, but that the most mainstream YA and children’s fantasy always seems to feature girls in the sidekick role only (Hermione in the Harry Potter books, for example). There was some back-and-forth on why this might be, and what might be done about it (a lot of people blamed the “common wisdom” that girls will read things with male protagonists, but boys won’t read things with female protagonists), but nothing truly conclusive or astonishing was said.

The other interesting point that came up is that while female characters (main and otherwise) are pretty common in fantasy at the moment, there are not very many non-fantasy adventure stories featuring girls – and those that do feature them usually feature unwilling protagonists. Again, nothing really conclusive was said about this, but it’s something interesting to ponder.

Highlight: Veronica L. Schanoes (who has the most awesome hair ever, btw) talking about the scene at the end of the first HP book, wherein “Harry says ‘Hermione, you should go, you’re way better at this,’ and then Hermione says ‘but there are more important things. You should go, Harry, because you have…bravery.’” There was a brief pause, whilst Sharyn November (I believe) muttered “a penis”, prompting Schanoes to say, very clearly, “Right, exactly. What he has is a penis.” [of course, this is all from memory, so I am probably quoting inaccurately. Paraphrase! Paraphrase!]

Other Highlight: Sharyn November (who also has gorgeous hair, actually. And is generally just gorgeous) saying that the best person to answer a certain question would be “Patty Wrede – Patty, speak up!”. And when Patricia C. Wrede spoke up, I realized she was right behind me.

Other Other Highlight: Getting signatures and friendly “nice to meet you”s from both Patricia C. Wrede and Caroline Stevermer, who wrote Sorcery and Cecilia, which was part of the inspiration behind my wanting to play the letter game that became Seen and Spoken. They told me that they’ve got another offering in that series coming out this fall. YAY.
( And now, the book list! )

A callus totally just fell off my heel. This has nothing to do with the rest of this post, but it’s uppermost in my mind, so I thought I’d mention it. Ouch!

Ok, moving on… I was puttering around this evening wanting to do something productive, but not sure what, and it occurred to me that it might be worthwhile to do some actual Con Report type stuff regarding WisCon. Only, instead of giving a general “first I did this and then that and then this” overview (which I sorta did as it was going on, y’know), I figure I’ll type up my notes for each of the panels I attended over the next few days (or however long), and then add some closing remarks or whatever each panel seems to call for.

So! We begin with “Láadan vs. tlhIngan Hol: Differential Diffusion of Created Languages” (because I did not take notes on “Curse Words and Other Ways to Tell It’s Not a Children’s Book”, which was actually the first panel I attended).
( Read more... )

To persons who were hoping to hear from me regarding some IHOPage tonight:

I am sorry, but Karen and Jimmy and I are tired and floppy like jellyfishes that have been on a road trip for almost two weeks, or something. Except more dehydrated. Out-going-ness is not happening for us tonight, in any sense of the term.

In brighter news, I walked into a toy store today and left without any new Barbies! I may have actually developed self control! A little! Maybe!

I want to write coherent, interesting entries about WisCon, and I have oodles of story ideas bouncing around in my brain right now, some of which I am all primed to share with all y'all immediately, omg, except that I am, as I said before, in a jellyfish-like state.

I don't think jellyfish are any good for typing. Hard to depress keys on a laptop with one's nematocysts.

I have been trying to keep up with my flist, but did I miss anything fantastic/awful/momentous?

Also, not that I am considering organizing any such thing, but how many of you would be interested in a themed sort of multi-fandom + original works a-ok ficathon/challenge dealie? I'm just wondering if everyone is ficathon'd out.

Anyone in Tucson want to do IHOP or something late-nightish on Thursday?

Wow, have I not posted since Saturday? I guess not!

Er... Lesse... Things happened! Lots of them! Some involved fancy dresses, and some involved delicious deserts and speeches that made me cry and wonderful, wonderful WisCon experiences of all sorts...

But the thing uppermost in my mind is, of course, driving.

OMG, we have been driving forever. Except we can't have been, because that is actually how long we will be driving tomorrow.

kphoebe and I have been taking turns writing in the car, though, and we've actually managed to compose about 3,500 words of new first draft material. Go, us!

She's writing an entry on Jameson's laptop right now. She's sitting cross-legged on the bed where he's stretched out reading a signed collection of Ursula K. LeGuin stories. Karen would probably sit on her own bed, except that it's covered with books.

I should probably kick her off mine and Jimmy's bed so that I can go sleep in it, actually. We really do have hours and hours of driving to do tomorrow.

I'm going to try to write coherently and somewhat intelligently about the whole WisCon thing when I get back to Tucson. My brain is a bit too liquified from driving (I ALMOST GOT HIT BY A SEMI TODAY) to manage it now.