(no subject)
Sep. 4th, 2012 11:15 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
seekingferretSo... WorldCon is over. I was in a bubble of not caring about the outside world very much for the past week; I am slowly reacclimating.
It is frustrating, but when I think about WorldCon some of the things that most stick out are the regrets. I wish I had found time to sit in on the book discussion panels about RUR, Frankenstein, and Pebble in the Sky. I wish I'd spend more than a couple hours in the filk rooms. I wish I'd seen more of Story Musgrave's panels, I wish I'd seen more of John Scalzi's panels, I wish I'd seen more of Sy Liebgot's panels. The GoHs were doing awesome things and I mostly missed them. I wish I'd dropped into the SF film festival. I wish I'd managed to hit a couple more kaffeeklatches. I wish I'd gone to some readings. I wish I'd gotten to run a D&D Next playtest. On the other hand, there was maybe one Con event all week that I left thinking "I wish I hadn't sat in on that."
There wasn't remotely close to enough time to do everything I wanted to do at WorldCon.
I did attend some really great panels on astronomy and astrophysics. I attended some great panels on writing and character building and world building. They have me excited about writing and trying to apply some of the new techniques and ideas I learned. I saw the masquerade and the Hugo Awards. I managed to wake up every morning for the Stroll with the Stars, which was a great opportunity to meet other fans and authors, see Chicago, and slowly wake up. I only went to room parties one night, but had a blast at them. I got to listen to some of the field's legends tell stories and share advice. I went to a meetup for internet strangers that proved a lot of fun. I learned several new board and card games. I played SF trivia and finished about tenth. And then there were the true intangibles, of just being in a place where casually slipping references to The Fountains of Paradise into conversations with people I'd never met before doesn't send the conversation to a crashing halt. I loved being in a place with so much shared context.
Major frustrations mostly stemmed from getting assigned a 26th story room despite requesting a low floor. I climbed a hell of a lot of stairs on Shabbat. Otherwise, my WorldCon Shabbat was nice- I attended the super-awkward Friday night service and we managed to carve out a meaningful moment despite lack of leadership and lack of theological consensus. And between panels and games and the morning walk, I never lacked for Shabbasdic things to do. I had a conversation withkass a while back where we discussed how cons can sometimes have a feeling that tries to pull you away from the ruach of Shabbat, but besides the stair issue that feeling never really cropped up.
Hmm... Other observations: Worldcon is expensive as hell. I had a great time, and I want to be part of the community again, but I'm not sure the experience justifies the costs. I haven't decided yet if I'm going to try to go to LoneStarCon next year.
Also, on diversity issues: Worldcon fandom skews old and it skews white, but it surprisingly does not skew male all that much. I am sure there are women who have negative experiences because of their gender (some women did tell me about harassment they've experienced at past Worldcons), and I'm sure that my privilege blinds me to some of the problems, but I really saw little evidence of problems, and I saw a lot of women productively and comfortably participating in the convention.
Worldcon also skews American and Anglophone, but Mary Anne Mohanraj moderated a really productive panel on improving the internationalization of Worldcon and it seems clear that this is a thing which can get better and which people are actively working on improving. They discussed how the Japanese Worldcon failed to integrate the Anglophone and Japanophone communities so that it effectively felt like two cons, and how the prospective Japanese bid for a future Worldcon is rethinking the way it does translation to make panels more cross-linguistically accessible. They discussed fundraising methods for getting more non-English SF translated into English, how to bring non-Anglophone writers to Worldcon, and even how to do non-English readings. A Chinese panelist read from his novel in Chinese and we analyzed the experience and discussed how we could transform that moment of culture gap into a meaningful shared experience via subtitles or pre-distributed translations. Mohanraj described a Bengali poetry reading she organized where the majority of the audience didn't understand the text, but still appreciated the reading for the beauty of the sounds and rhythms and the fact that it brought poets to their attention that otherwise would have escaped their radar. Outside of this panel, I spoke to con members from Norway, Sweden, Australia, Denmark, England, Japan and probably several other countries. Worldcon isn't quite as international yet as it could be, but it does offer a lot of neat opportunities to meet fen from all sorts of fannish worlds.
It is frustrating, but when I think about WorldCon some of the things that most stick out are the regrets. I wish I had found time to sit in on the book discussion panels about RUR, Frankenstein, and Pebble in the Sky. I wish I'd spend more than a couple hours in the filk rooms. I wish I'd seen more of Story Musgrave's panels, I wish I'd seen more of John Scalzi's panels, I wish I'd seen more of Sy Liebgot's panels. The GoHs were doing awesome things and I mostly missed them. I wish I'd dropped into the SF film festival. I wish I'd managed to hit a couple more kaffeeklatches. I wish I'd gone to some readings. I wish I'd gotten to run a D&D Next playtest. On the other hand, there was maybe one Con event all week that I left thinking "I wish I hadn't sat in on that."
There wasn't remotely close to enough time to do everything I wanted to do at WorldCon.
I did attend some really great panels on astronomy and astrophysics. I attended some great panels on writing and character building and world building. They have me excited about writing and trying to apply some of the new techniques and ideas I learned. I saw the masquerade and the Hugo Awards. I managed to wake up every morning for the Stroll with the Stars, which was a great opportunity to meet other fans and authors, see Chicago, and slowly wake up. I only went to room parties one night, but had a blast at them. I got to listen to some of the field's legends tell stories and share advice. I went to a meetup for internet strangers that proved a lot of fun. I learned several new board and card games. I played SF trivia and finished about tenth. And then there were the true intangibles, of just being in a place where casually slipping references to The Fountains of Paradise into conversations with people I'd never met before doesn't send the conversation to a crashing halt. I loved being in a place with so much shared context.
Major frustrations mostly stemmed from getting assigned a 26th story room despite requesting a low floor. I climbed a hell of a lot of stairs on Shabbat. Otherwise, my WorldCon Shabbat was nice- I attended the super-awkward Friday night service and we managed to carve out a meaningful moment despite lack of leadership and lack of theological consensus. And between panels and games and the morning walk, I never lacked for Shabbasdic things to do. I had a conversation with
kass a while back where we discussed how cons can sometimes have a feeling that tries to pull you away from the ruach of Shabbat, but besides the stair issue that feeling never really cropped up.Hmm... Other observations: Worldcon is expensive as hell. I had a great time, and I want to be part of the community again, but I'm not sure the experience justifies the costs. I haven't decided yet if I'm going to try to go to LoneStarCon next year.
Also, on diversity issues: Worldcon fandom skews old and it skews white, but it surprisingly does not skew male all that much. I am sure there are women who have negative experiences because of their gender (some women did tell me about harassment they've experienced at past Worldcons), and I'm sure that my privilege blinds me to some of the problems, but I really saw little evidence of problems, and I saw a lot of women productively and comfortably participating in the convention.
Worldcon also skews American and Anglophone, but Mary Anne Mohanraj moderated a really productive panel on improving the internationalization of Worldcon and it seems clear that this is a thing which can get better and which people are actively working on improving. They discussed how the Japanese Worldcon failed to integrate the Anglophone and Japanophone communities so that it effectively felt like two cons, and how the prospective Japanese bid for a future Worldcon is rethinking the way it does translation to make panels more cross-linguistically accessible. They discussed fundraising methods for getting more non-English SF translated into English, how to bring non-Anglophone writers to Worldcon, and even how to do non-English readings. A Chinese panelist read from his novel in Chinese and we analyzed the experience and discussed how we could transform that moment of culture gap into a meaningful shared experience via subtitles or pre-distributed translations. Mohanraj described a Bengali poetry reading she organized where the majority of the audience didn't understand the text, but still appreciated the reading for the beauty of the sounds and rhythms and the fact that it brought poets to their attention that otherwise would have escaped their radar. Outside of this panel, I spoke to con members from Norway, Sweden, Australia, Denmark, England, Japan and probably several other countries. Worldcon isn't quite as international yet as it could be, but it does offer a lot of neat opportunities to meet fen from all sorts of fannish worlds.
(no subject)
Date: 2012-09-04 04:32 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2012-09-04 07:37 pm (UTC)I definitely agree with your assessment of reasons and would go further to add that it's that many of the bestselling authors have been women FOR FORTY YEARS NOW. The literary fannish world has had a lot of time to get used to women being at cons. And those women who have been going to cons for decades have worked hard to get on concomms and programming committees and fight for the changes that made them able to feel comfortable at cons. Let's not pretend it was just the passage of time and the change in demographics that made Worldcon get less misogynistic. People worked really hard to fix the problems they saw, and they spoke up despite the social and even physical risks.
(no subject)
Date: 2012-09-05 12:49 am (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2012-09-05 12:55 am (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2012-09-05 12:33 am (UTC)DC felt so much safer and moreover welcoming to me as a woman than any of the PAXes I've been to. Even when I've felt safe enough at a PAX, I never felt welcomed. I'll never choose PAX Prime over a DC after this, though I might choose a PAX East over DC (if they happened at the same time which they wouldn't, since my friends attend PAX East).
(no subject)
Date: 2012-09-05 12:48 am (UTC)I also have never been to a PAX East, and I hear that Prime is indeed a lot less welcoming than East, which is interesting.
I need to hit Dragoncon sometime.
(no subject)
Date: 2012-09-05 12:49 am (UTC)I'm not saying it's a GOOD thing or that it excuses PAX feeling less welcoming to women, but it's an interesting point.
(no subject)
Date: 2012-09-05 01:02 am (UTC)And what were my inflammatory suggestions? Putting at least one woman on as many panels as possible, having a few women moderators, having a woman keynote speaker (which I don't think they've had yet), having more panels focused on women, not putting the single women-focused panel opposite the most popular event, and so on.
(no subject)
Date: 2012-09-05 02:54 pm (UTC)The only incident I saw was when a 90 year old fan made a boob grabbing joke on stage at the Hugo Ceremony, but I think everyone was prepared to cut him some slack because 90 years old.
(no subject)
Date: 2012-09-05 08:09 pm (UTC)