Discon 3
DisCon 3 was great fun, but I also heard a few people use the word bittersweet. Many of us had a deep, aching sense of what the Con could have been, of all the people who weren't there, of all the ideas that hadn't been executed. And we were aware that the world is not right at the moment, and that coming to the convention constituted a risk that might still prove to have been unjustified. But I got to see a lot of friends for the first time in ages, and I met amazing new people, and I really felt the joy and creativity of the SFF community.
I got to meet
name in person for the first time and we solved a couple of cryptic crosswords together, after solving a number of them together online over the course of the past two years. That was really cool, especially since way more of my brain has been in puzzles lately than in SF fandom. And I got to spend a lot of quality time with
freeradical42, which was so good to have- this is only the second time I've seen them in person since 2019, and the internet doesn't do very good hugs. I also very briefly saw
ambyr.
As someone who worked as low level staff on program brainstorming, I'm extremely proud of the program that resulted, but I also wish more of the work we did could have been used. We had so many great program ideas that didn't make it past development because of limits on space and staff and panelists. I'm looking forward to watching more of the program, a good portion of which was recorded and will shortly be available for members to watch online for a few weeks. When I signed up it was with the goal of producing fanworks programming that a) did not waste time justifying the existence of fanfiction and b) was more extensive than it's been in past years, offering more cool stuff to fans of fanworks at Worldcon. We succeeded at the first task, but because of space limitations, not the second. I hope future Worldcons will do better than we did.
Favorite program stuff included plotting a better Fantastic Four movie, the Orphan Black panel, the Washington Metro Gamer Symphony Orchestra concert, and a presentation by Katie Mack on going to Mars. I also really enjoyed a conversation I got into with some other audience members after the panel on fantasy animal morphology. The question they asked was about how the existence of a Creator in a fantasy world changed what was possible for fantasy animal plausibility. The panelists kind of dismissed it, but I thought it was such an interesting question because sure you can say Yes, God can create a burrito so big He can't eat it, but, like... any theogony is going to have its own constraints on internal consistency. Gods have motivation as well as intelligence, the question you have to ask is no longer "Will this creature fit within a world with a square-cube law" but rather "Will this creature fit in a world where the God-Creator is invested in the salvation of their worshipers?" or "Will this creature fit in a world where the God-Creator is a war deity?" It led to a really interesting conversation about the place of Creation in fantasy worldbuilding.
The Hugos had a weird accident that led to them being postponed an hour, but when they actually happened the ceremony was great aside from some small technical glitches and a weirdly executed memorial scroll. It felt like it was supposed to, a celebration of the genre's best this year, an affirmation of forward progress, and I was so glad to be there. There were a lot of, just, really moving speeches from winners. We've all been through a lot the past few years, it was nice to celebrate something good for once.
After the Hugos, I had a fanvid watching party in my hotel room, which was a fascinating experience. I had some visitors who knew what vids were and were there to enjoy them, but most of my visitors had no idea what a vid was. Some of them had no interest in learning and ran away after a minute of blank stares and seeing I didn't have much in the way of food, some stayed and watched some vids, although I'm not entirely clear if they understood the idea any more after their visit. I had one woman who was probably in her late 60s or 70s who sat down, watched three or four vids without saying a word or moving her head from staring at the screen, and then left. Around 2AM a couple of big youtubers showed up and we got drunk and I made them watch
sisabet's "This Is the Song That Never Ends", the 30 minute Supernatural vid. All of it. Oh man, if watching that on its own were an experience, watching other people see it for the first time and get alternately confused and angry and amazed and singing along with the choruses and then shouting for it to be shut off was amazing and surreal. I may be a bad person.
I missed some DC friends and family I'd intended to catch, but I did drive over to see a couple of people on the way out. On the whole, driving down to DC was a mistake. Parking was such a nightmare that it cost me hours anytime I actually used my car. But I was grateful it gave us access to better Shabbos food, and the ability to stop and see friends on the way home. This entry was originally posted at https://seekingferret.dreamwidth.org/387911.html. Please comment there using OpenID. There are
comments.
I got to meet
name in person for the first time and we solved a couple of cryptic crosswords together, after solving a number of them together online over the course of the past two years. That was really cool, especially since way more of my brain has been in puzzles lately than in SF fandom. And I got to spend a lot of quality time with
freeradical42, which was so good to have- this is only the second time I've seen them in person since 2019, and the internet doesn't do very good hugs. I also very briefly saw
ambyr.
As someone who worked as low level staff on program brainstorming, I'm extremely proud of the program that resulted, but I also wish more of the work we did could have been used. We had so many great program ideas that didn't make it past development because of limits on space and staff and panelists. I'm looking forward to watching more of the program, a good portion of which was recorded and will shortly be available for members to watch online for a few weeks. When I signed up it was with the goal of producing fanworks programming that a) did not waste time justifying the existence of fanfiction and b) was more extensive than it's been in past years, offering more cool stuff to fans of fanworks at Worldcon. We succeeded at the first task, but because of space limitations, not the second. I hope future Worldcons will do better than we did.
Favorite program stuff included plotting a better Fantastic Four movie, the Orphan Black panel, the Washington Metro Gamer Symphony Orchestra concert, and a presentation by Katie Mack on going to Mars. I also really enjoyed a conversation I got into with some other audience members after the panel on fantasy animal morphology. The question they asked was about how the existence of a Creator in a fantasy world changed what was possible for fantasy animal plausibility. The panelists kind of dismissed it, but I thought it was such an interesting question because sure you can say Yes, God can create a burrito so big He can't eat it, but, like... any theogony is going to have its own constraints on internal consistency. Gods have motivation as well as intelligence, the question you have to ask is no longer "Will this creature fit within a world with a square-cube law" but rather "Will this creature fit in a world where the God-Creator is invested in the salvation of their worshipers?" or "Will this creature fit in a world where the God-Creator is a war deity?" It led to a really interesting conversation about the place of Creation in fantasy worldbuilding.
The Hugos had a weird accident that led to them being postponed an hour, but when they actually happened the ceremony was great aside from some small technical glitches and a weirdly executed memorial scroll. It felt like it was supposed to, a celebration of the genre's best this year, an affirmation of forward progress, and I was so glad to be there. There were a lot of, just, really moving speeches from winners. We've all been through a lot the past few years, it was nice to celebrate something good for once.
After the Hugos, I had a fanvid watching party in my hotel room, which was a fascinating experience. I had some visitors who knew what vids were and were there to enjoy them, but most of my visitors had no idea what a vid was. Some of them had no interest in learning and ran away after a minute of blank stares and seeing I didn't have much in the way of food, some stayed and watched some vids, although I'm not entirely clear if they understood the idea any more after their visit. I had one woman who was probably in her late 60s or 70s who sat down, watched three or four vids without saying a word or moving her head from staring at the screen, and then left. Around 2AM a couple of big youtubers showed up and we got drunk and I made them watch
sisabet's "This Is the Song That Never Ends", the 30 minute Supernatural vid. All of it. Oh man, if watching that on its own were an experience, watching other people see it for the first time and get alternately confused and angry and amazed and singing along with the choruses and then shouting for it to be shut off was amazing and surreal. I may be a bad person.
I missed some DC friends and family I'd intended to catch, but I did drive over to see a couple of people on the way out. On the whole, driving down to DC was a mistake. Parking was such a nightmare that it cost me hours anytime I actually used my car. But I was grateful it gave us access to better Shabbos food, and the ability to stop and see friends on the way home. This entry was originally posted at https://seekingferret.dreamwidth.org/387911.html. Please comment there using OpenID. There are
comments.