At the bar

Missed the reading at room of one's own (because we got to the hotel right when they were happening)

Rested - took vicodin -

Went to the hotel bar in pajamas - had some pomegranate martinis with timmi -saw sylvia k. - and ellen kl. - mostly hung out w timmi (so happy to see her!) talked with her and rachel sw. and eileen and eva and oyceter and tempest -mostly eileen and i talked about teh internets and what it meant to really live in this constant wash of information (for those of us who really do) which we think of as fucking around on the net but which is potentially something else - talked about books on the kindle/ipod - talked about robin hobb books - and her wwii flying ace game development experience - totally fun sense that I could say anything wild-eyed to Eileen and she would get it. I got cynthia1960 to sign my book (I want all the people in wiscon chron to sign my book!)

so much fun! so relaxing! so lovely!

missing quilter, & therem...

Oh, burn

After an hour at the breakfast table in the hotel (joined oursin, talked w timmi and with jj, who was charmingly reading saul alinsky book at nearby table, Moomin reading chitty chitty bang bang over froot loops) I tried to show Moomin a view of where we are on google maps. His response was... interesting...

Me: Look how we're right in the middle of the two lakes!
Moomin: Huh.
Me: I wonder if..
Moomin: (acidly) By the way.... COULD YOU LET ME READ IN PEACE?

Yes... yes I could...

i have certainly reaped what i sowed!

Free books and how we use them

I was showing Eileen my ipod last night and explaining that I got completely hooked on it just this month. We got into a conversation about free books and I thought it might be interesting to other people. Here is that story...

I got Zond7 to start reading the Temeraire books and also read the OTW blog. The OTW blog (I am pretty sure) linked to Del Rey's free book library which put up several novels in DRM-free formats. He downloaded His Majesty's Dragon and a couple of other books (including Assassin's Apprentice by Robin Hobb). I stole his ipod for a few days to play games on it and idly looked at the Kindle app, had already read His Majesty's Dragon 6 times and so started the Assassin book to see what it was like to read a book on this tiny handheld device.

My reaction at first was that the character names (Chivalry, Verity) were going to mean this was a sort of overly twee fairy tale-ish fantasy novel. But it wasn't that, and I got sucked into reading it. With some shame and a feeling that I was sucked into a trashy series against my will, I then demanded Zond7's amazon password so i could instantly buy book 2 of the Assassin (Farseer) trilogy. About halfway through book 2 I realized it was not trashy at all, it was amazing and profound and awesome. Then I *bought my own ipod touch* and started buying books on it. I downloaded the rest of the Del Rey free books, which will be totally great to sample a bunch of authors I'd never otherwise look at, at least, not until several of my friends tell me to read them, or i notice everyone blogging about them, or some fandom develops wehre everyone's writing amazing fic -- that is how I find new authors, now.

I find new music the same way: someone shares something free, I hear it on a bulletin board or from a youtube clip on someone's blog, then I go and (illegally) download a bunch of their work for free, and follow the threads of "if you liked X, you will like Y and Z", download a bunch of Y and Z to see if I like their work too: then I buy an album. It's a way to spend an evening, and it results in my buying something. I buy it only if it is high quality and DRM free so that I can have decent backkups and put it on whatever device i like (over time, not just for now) and put it on Moomin's movies or potentially mash it up or make mix cds, in short all the things I generally do with music. The point is that I would never even know about the work if I didn't do the step with the (pointlessly illegal) downloading and exploring and linkage of works to other works. And, if I did not have the money to buy some songs or an album at the end of that process, i never would have bought anything anyway.

My point here is that Del Rey's decision to release some works for free in multiple formats led directly to:

- my buying the next 8 books by Hobb
- my blogging about Hobb's series (and i will do so in more detail soon)
- Del Rey's site getting boingboinged (i.e., likely a massive surge in their traffic)
- my telling about 200 people to go read Hobb's work and beginning to plot WisCon panels and wondering if the Tawny Man series was up for a Tiptree (if it wasn't, it should be)

I especially appreciate the Del Rey approach because they put PDFs of the work up too, which means that (unlike on the kindle app) I can potentially *search the full text of the book*, which is very very useful to me as I think about writing reviews of it! I can't actually search, because of some quirk of how the pdf is, but I could convert the PDF to plain text... which is probably illegal or something... SO annoying.

As soon as I get a chance I'm going looking for fic set in this world... Cannot get enough of it. I love its worldbuilding. It would make a very good world to play a long-running RPG campaign in, with its multiple magic systems and complicated politics.

So, I wish that once I bought the other books, I could also get their pdfs so that I can browse and search properly. It would be ideal if the Kindle app let me search... why the hell don't they? I want to be able to answer questions (and write about them) like, when the Fool named that one particular horse after that other character I won't name, how was his manner described? What book did we first see the Wit referred to as the Old Blood? And looking up details like when twho characters first appeared together... All difficult enough to look up when you have 9 books as physical objects to riffle through and cover with sticky notes. But impossible, if you bought them on the Kindle which *doesn't have a damned search function*!! Therefore, I will be looking to crack the DRM and convert the files. Why should I have to do something illegal in order to have a closer relationship with a beloved text?

Wiscon friday

plan:

rest in bed for a while after breakfast: then, Gathering, cultural appropriation workshop, dealer room or Room of one's own OR "We do the work" working class in SF panel OR warrior women panel; dinner w timmi, LJ party/Race panel/Bastard Gods panel.

Need Time Turner, or clones, to achieve this.

Will update later with report of what I actually did.

Cultural appropriation workshop notes

Victor, Cabell, Nisi. I am a bit late (the lift was broken and i had to find someone to help me get my wheelchair up the stairs.)

(Basic vocabulary)

Cabell - not approaching like a cafeteria, picking and choosing

Nisi - you mean like decontextualizing?

Victor - cultures changing over time; ways they are viewed also change. U.S. idea of native americans as bloodthirsty, then that morphed into a countercurrent that romanticized them as in touch with nature...

Nisi - my opinion is the Geoff did it right.

Nisi - When is it good, when is it bad? It's better when you pay back. Don't just take stuff, ask, and return something to whoever you're taking from. Not everyone agrees with that.

Victor: Does this mean the British Museum has to return the Elgin Marbles? (laughter)

Aud: what does that mean?

Victor: Not treating culture as some kind of magical grab bag, not realizing that there's peopel who might be noticing and objecting to how you depicted their culture. You are not an objective observer.

Nisi: Ways of giving back. Credit. Asking for guidance. Disclaimer, like in Wallamellon i use a system of divination i invented, but because i practice other methods of religion i had to make sure that everyone understood I had invented this. Give your teacher a massage. chop their wood. Give something back.

Nisi: a last point, but we'll come back to it. First, a couple of exercises. Or more vocabulary.

Nisi: This requires some writing. Exercise in writing the other. Identity tourism.

...(in progress)

Cabell: people in games playing with online identity. playing asian women and then acting subserviant. playing african american and nameing self "ghetto man". playing a woman and then saying that being female made you "nicer". People wear their own stereotypes.

Nisi: Diantha Sprouse talked about people becoming, coming into a culture and coming into a country and doing it as tourists, as invited guests, adoptees, immigrants. sometimes emigres are actually tourists.

Victor: A book recommendation. Dislocating Cultures, by Uma Narayan.

Nisi: Exercise: Write about yourself for 5 minutes. Change one characteristic, but keep everything else the same. for example i could do myself, Nisi, but differently abled as a double amputee. Age, religion, ability, race, sex.

(We do the exercise)

Nisi: Was it easy or hard? What stereotypes did you use? Was it hard to avoid them?

Aud: (most people say it was hard) Changing one thing was hard - everything else changed.

Victor: we tend to think of these things in neat discrete categories but it's not that easy. Did you find yourself thinking in new ways about the category you theoretically and temporarily joined? And the one you deserted? What happened? What did you have to do to talk about yourself?

Aud: it creates a lot of conflict. I imagined what it was like if i were religious. The things that i believe, like why am i here, reconciling what i think about the catholic church, i dont mean to offend anyone here but i think a lot of the teachings of the catholic church are not in line to best serve the human race, but if i were really devout i'd have to think about things differently. how would i be living with myself? woudl that change what i think? would i be less compassionate? more compassionate? my whole social life would change.

Aud (margaret mcbride) If I had been a black child. I went to school in both integrated and segregated schools and i would have gone to the black segregated schools in Virginia. from there i was thinking of vietnam, me as a black child? My brother might have died, a lot more black people in vietnam.

Victor: yes, your life chances.

Aud: physical ability. how little i knew, how would it change the way i felt, my house, adaptations, etc.

Cabell: the ways that white people react with defensiveness in discussions of race. it's important to realize that the society we live in now is historically shaped. the mortgage market. after wwii, jewish people were able to buy houses, they entered into the middle class and were absorbed into the white middle class unmarked dominant category. "how the jews became white" and black people didn't get wealth through home equity because they had a lot harder time getting mortgages.

Victor: the native american side of that is, depending on your tribe, much of the land is trust land. because it was ostensibly set aside for native americans, it has restrictions that make it extremely difficult to get a mortgage on real estate. if you've ever driven across a reservation and wondered why the housing gets so bad, it's because people on reservations had to limit what they build based on what they can afford without a mortgate.

(I *had* wondered that, and Victor's point had not occurred to me)

Nisi: white, male, straight, middle class, middle aged, able bodied. The "unmarked" state. I myself read something and have these assumptions, if it's not identified and then suddenly it is, i find myself realizing that i had assumed the unmakred was white guy.

Victor: noticing when someone isn't white. mention it all time, I was talking to my doctor all the time, he's a white guy. You're laughing... a little tension there? As you notice this unmarked state, it begins to incite a a range of reactions among people who hear you. they get agitated and challenge why you do it.

Nisi: Terms and discussing definitions. Magical Negro. Cabell pointed out, is another version of the Noble Savage.

Aud: Wise old Asian.

Nisi: Define the magical negro for us.

Aud: I seee this older wise figure, not always older, exists to advise and provide assistance to the unmarked white hero. mystical abilities or understanding of the world and uses this for the benefit of the her.

Cabell: usually for no reason, no real reason, and at great personal cost, and they usually die.

Aud: This assumption on that character's part that they're always going to be second in command, they're never trying to have their own life or own motivation

Nisi: similar to the sidekick

Geoff: in effot to representation, there is one asian, one black person, you won't see more than one. the implication is of some sort of massive clturla genocide. the isolated character.

Victor: the isolated character can also be denatured. they exist sui generis. they have nothing that says, where did they come from.

Cabell: they come out of stories that only have the one character.

Ian: one thing i observe about the magical negro, noble savage, they only exist in contrast to the generic bland doesn't exiast in history main character. there's a kind of , the american story of becoming white, is taht you become normal, you don't have special food or music, people get to make fun of you because you don't have any of those things, lack of self reflection is essential to the continuation of various forms of oppression that we're not talking about directly.

Victor: I'm glad you brought that up. the creation of whiteness as an identity marker involves an awful lot of erasure.

Cabell: why are al the black kids sitting together in the cafeteria. there is a good section on white identity. there is a white mainstream middle class cutlure but it's as if the white culture is unmarked. they have no culture, they get to say that because they're being catered to.

Aud: Isolated person of color, when you revove out the other peopel of color you remove a culture, you remove any conflict, they can serve the heroic white person without any conflict twith their family, for example.

Victor: don't get me going on mission to mars.

Nisi: Clueful. i use this as a term for a really good ally. thought about and deeply absorbed ideas and issues of cultural appropriation.

Nisi: claire light came up with this, we talk about peopel being clueful, then we say they have four paws, one paw, we're talking about blue's clues, the TV show. It's a ranking system, not codified, (YET)) Four paws, very clueful. My friend Kate, when i got thrown off the bus one time, i was thrown off by a really tense bus driver, and i told her about it and without my even saying antying she went "that must have been racial profiling" i dind't have to pull the race card, she pulled it out. It made me feel very relaxed and supported, that i didn't have to be the one to point out that race might be a factor. i didn't have to reach out and educate them, they were right there with me.

Cabell: You may be familiar with RaceFail09. People on my friends list saying "i'm not going to say anthing because i'll say it wrong and people will be mean to me. )

(Ian explains to me that we all took an Oath at panel beginning that this might be explosive and we aren't going to pick a fight or anything: i missed that part)

Cabell: Unpakcing the invisible knapsack, going into a store without being followed, knowing your children will be treated with respect at school. it's not that whit epopel take those privileges because they hate people who are not white, but you're in a system that is a system of advantage. Worry not about hte past but about what you could be doing now to make that system less strong. if your'e talking about race with people you may not know the right questions to ask at the beginning, it's better to listen to what people have to say. you don't have the breadth of knowledge to talk about it at the begininng in the way that people who have experienced things, as a person of color. first listen and get some undertstanding.

Victor: there is a difference between someone who IS a racist and someone who just acted in a racist way. We have been brought up with the idea that I just can't be a racist. People make it automatically a matter of identity. That blinds them or ummm! *distracts* them sometimes that they might be doing something that might have a racist charactersitic to it.

Aud: The Tone argument. a lot of peopel just don't understand that tempers get heated because there's pain there. people get angry.

Beth P: can you define aversive racism? i just came across that and it was very helpful concept.

Aud: there's a video blogger...

EVERYONE IN ROOM: J SMOOTH!!!

Victor: Ill Doctrine, it's awesome

(general agreement)

Alan b: when tempers rise, civility and tone are weapons used by the privileged to keep opposition to their views unheard.

Victor: you step on someone's toe, they say ouch that hurts, you say i didn't mean to, they say, well, you did! Then you say well don't be so angry. But, their toe has been stepped on 100 times already.

Aud: Derailing

Aud: Let's not talk about that.

*everyone laughs*

Victor: You win the Internet!
Aud: please don't skip derailing for those of us who don't live on the internet.

Cabell: why are you so angry, so bitchy, overreacting, derails by chagnign what the conversation is about. so you take it and make the conversation about your hurt feelings

Victor: for example taking a discussion about race and saying it's really all about class.

(I snort out loud, possibly breaking the Oath. )




Beth P: We, white people, or people of color, are raised in the culture we're rased in, to believe that some things just kind of "are". people say i'm not racist" but they've absorbed some stereotypes, we don't realize we're nto good liberal white people whoare politically correct and fair, but we amke judgements based on cultural conditioning, for example i'm standing in front of two elevators, do i get into the one wih the white man in a business suit, in the other is a black teenager in baggy pants. which one do i get onto.

Victor "I got onto the elevator with the white man because he looked nice." rather than acknowledging there is an elmeent of racism, palcing the decision on something else.

Beth: only if we're very very blind.

Victor: the idea of "cookies", but never mind that.

Exercise: write about how images are alike:

same:

they are both hipsters. they look sort of cool and confident and a little bit brash and defiant. they are both white guys young or middle aged adults. they both seem to have paid attention to their hair and clothing. they are both carrying something, one a guitar and the other a strap across that might be a musical instrument or a laptop bag. they both look directly at the camera and are not smiling and have their mouths closed. both ahve their hair cut in layers. their noses are a similiar shape.

Different:

one is more counterculture looking with leather jacket and sunglasses. the other is more mainstream. one has his hands showing. the mainstream polo shirt guy is in short sleeves and has shorter hair. he has a bracemet or watch band and is cleaner shaven and younger. the leather jacket guy has a guitar and longer hair like a 70s rocker.

Victor talks about the Carl Brandon Society.

Was this hard or easy? which was harder or easier - same or different? did you identify with one or the other images? did you think of them as people you might know?

We do the work: panel on working class in SF

ETA: maryread has great concise notes on this panel:

http://maryread.livejournal.com/258165.html

...


(i came in in the middle)

Eleanor A. Arnason, Diana Sherman, Fred Shepartz, Chris Hill, Michael J. Lowrey.

Chris Hill: we imagine these futures with no workign class but the working class isn't going to disappear!

Michael L. Lowrey: so you have a sloosh pipe that takes away the garbage, so what, you are still going to need a person to build and maintain that sloosh pipe. (and where does the garbage go to?) and as i told my daughter from very early on in her life, there is no such place as "Away". what happens to the garbae when you throw it "away"? if you dont' think about the economic there is a oment where you freeze up

aud: spock is giving kirk a copy of tale of two cities for his birthday. a couple of guys vaccuuming in the background. and i wondered, why janitors, and no one else from teh working class int he whole universe?

chris hill: a lot of science fiction is written from the top down and not the bottom up. i'm being grossly unfair, but it starts off with a big idea and then works down to a level of detail they're comfortable with. how does this society actually function, and then the big ideas about the society?

Fred: who couldn't use the holodeck? a society where you don't have to answer certain questions

aud: service class. could you address the issues of the service industry and service class? cyberpunk. people go into diners. they go into shops where they buy cheap clothes and junk. where does it come from, who sells that stuff, we see them, but it's not thought through. is there a difference, working class, service class?

fred: people who honor the worknig class, they want to honor blue collar, they don't think of my mom the waitress, or the hotel working class.

Fred: they show bartender, a service worker, he has a nice scene but he's not a full character. guy in clone wars int he movie not the cartoon, obi wan goes looking for information, guy who runs the diner.

Andrea Hairston: it's so gendered because i would consider a waitress working class. they are all women's jobs they are all definitely working class! plumber, machine shop, they make way more money than a hotel service worker. this is a very gendered view you're describing

Fred: pink collar... seiu, renassance of organizgin, the exploitation is so high. woman in 2nd row you ahve the best tshirt, "my marxist feminst dialectic brings all the boys to the yard"

(note i have seen 2 other people at wiscon today, wearing that same tshirt! )

Eleanor: in the working class you tend not to do things on your own. heroes of unions. (Madewan, john sales) this defies the idea of the solitary hero, it is collective action we're looking at. if you're going to write that kind of story you may move away from the basic ways that science fiction has been written. if you're thinkng about the future, it might be a good idea to think about how the future is organized socially. in thinking about star wars, if robots are able to do the jobs that working class people do now, they can do all the jobs in the story so why have only human heroic protagonists? think about who else might be there.

Diana: get back to that plumber, what it's like, what is different in that world. changes, richness throughout every class, it will create a more foreign feeling place from the ground up as opposed to somewhere that just has something grafted on to feel freaky and different.

Eleanor: plumbing is all about gravity. you use gravity to get stufff up and down through the system. so every time you move into an evnivonment with diferent gravity or no gravity. i never thought about it, how do you move water and soil products in a space station ? spinning, different apparent g in different parts of the station

chris : you would probably have to have a phsyical pumping system, woudnt you.

Eleanor: onec you have a gazillion pumps you have the maintenance of a gazillion pumps

Fred: i liked in Enterprise that they showed them taking showers (audience laughter) I was like Oh! they have showers ! the gravity goes out, the water goes out.

kaya: kevin j. anderson 7th son, the working class, Roamers. clannish. they appointa a Speaker.

chris: "clannish" puts my teeth on edge. middle class writers tend to use that language to describe working class... othering, distancing there. an entire race that's working class. that seems ... odd. How did that get established? how would that happen?

katya: they're all sort of castoff. theyr'e from earth and they're all working class.

Fred; It's a caste.

Katya: yeah, kind of .

Fred: do they feel like real characters, 3 dimensional, positive?

Katya: Oh yeah. the rest of society looks down on them but they are very positively shown

Michael: use by tolkien , fantasy race as a short hand for cultural differences and essences. i was thinking of ()Dixon's future history with the exotic world and the militray world, that hhumanity woudl shift and separate itself into entire planets that are monolitithic, as if there are metaphysical reasons this woudl occur. The Dorsai...
what happens if you're on a military world but you have the soul of an accountant?

Aud: two separate things... (I missed them)

Fred: I'd see them as inter-related. It reflecting inability to see workign people.

Aud: different solutions for those problems? or would addressing one, you address both.

Michael: if you don't have the idea that you have a working class, you're not likely to have a character who is in it.

Fred: more and better portrayals fo women and people of color?

eleanor: if you're a writer, more consciously thinking about bilding a world fromt he bottom up. howdoes your world actually work? for fans, i think cons can be very usefl. once you start to process talkng about thse issues, maybe people will start thinking about them more and it will affect what people write? and wheer people back authors into corners and say why do you only have a prince and no one else? It's important that authors think that, well, i'm rubbing my hands nervously because i haven't done a good job of it, is the world a stage set? or is something going on behind it? if you've ever been back stage in a theater there's an incredible amount going on out of sight. you have far richer story, as diana pointed out, if you make that back stage visible.

chris: If you are going to have working class characters, get it right! don't give peopel free passes! serious problems with Gregory Benford's Timescape. Oh, it's the best picture of how scientists realy work, but i will tel you one thing, ther are a number of english working class characters in that book and every single one of them is either stupid, or crooked. i almost threw the book across the room. but he gets a free pass on it!

Micheale: if you write fantasy, standard opening scene, Gorgax walks into a tavern and orders a big tangkard of ale from the serviing wench. i challenge you to follow her behind the bar and write the story about that serving wench.

Diana: and how many of those stories woudl be comedic?

*brief silence from everyone*

Aud: romance , personal life, then like, giant mutant moths and stuff. i kept thinking, couldn't they just go back to having dinner?

Chris hill: i have been frowned on by pointing out that most of the second half of perdido street station is (missed it..... but everyone cracked up)

Aud:what about this, robot maintenance worker and what he does. the cmopany has bought out the robot maintenance contract fo the station and the robots and the workers don't know what wil happen do them.

diana: you can have a story that is about an entire empire, and you can have a story about one space station, but you have to keep the stakes high so that everything matters, it's a different scale.

Eleanor: kornbluth story about a puerto rican kid who washes dishes and then walkes into a university and writes all these equations on the board. written in the 50s. and everyone judges him... 50s, cold war, military... super bomb... or something. And the guy is made a prisoner, and he gets unhappy, and has accident

aud: he forgets everything

Evelyn: He gets a girlfriend, and forgets everything

aud: AARRRRRGH!!!!

Evelyn: that's what ahppens!

Eleanor: and really, he would just rather be a dishwasher and not a prisoner. Knight, Kornbluth, willian tenor, where you get ordinary people, something extraordinary happens. somewhere along the way we lost that particular kind of story and we lost the people in that story.

Chris: when something does focus on workign class characters, a tendency to tell not their story but to use them to reflect on someone els'es story, babylon 5, harlan ellison who should know better, from point of view of two maintenance workers on the space ship, use them to tell the audience how wonderful the main characters are. they are purely there to reflect on the main characters, they have no life of their own

aud: i think that was jms not ellison

aud: using working class chars to tell stories that are not their own. Bradbury short story, mexico, farmer seeing all these cars full of tourists fleeing, end of world, atomic bomb, to him the world ending doens't make sense, their world is ending but not his. what do you mean "the world". was that a workign class view of "the world" and wwIII

chris: predicates the idea that workgin clas people are a bit dumb

Fred: moving on. why important that working class people be portrayed in sf?

eleanor: same as women and people of color being represented, partly, because they're there. F&SF should be true to some kinds of reality. Creating a fictio where the reader cannot ultimately see thesmelves in the characters is a disservice.generatsion of womena nd people of color grew up with out those role modes, what do you do if yo're not the genius scientist in the story, not the superhero.. Spiderman, part of the message is that you're not going to be able to solve problems if you haven't been bit by a radioactive spider, better to give the message that everyone can have an effect on the world.

Chris; i'm sure i'm not the only person in the room who has been incensed by how someone you know treats a waiter or cleaning staff and if you dn't see people treated as human in books, you're not going to treat them as human in real life. humanizing for other people, not just aspirational or models for working class.

Mike: thinking out the role for working class makes it a more rational and sociologicially sensible world. the distribution of people, better SF, if you've thought out the economics of a planet.

Mike: the greying of fandom, the working class used to read more, stories in Saturday Evening Post, now they watch tv instead

(I wonder if this is actually true, and i also don't believe at all in 'the greying of fandom'...)

Fred: YA fic is really hot... all the little girls hovering around the vampire shelves.

Andrea: There's a great video "Class Dismissed", about TV portrayals of working class people as buffoons, tragic, quaint, invisible or you wish they were.

Mike: Unions. On tv they are either corrupt or buffoons.

Chris: East Enders. A long running soap opera set in London's East End, last 25 years. It is a miserable piece of TV. (They get and do everything wrong)

Fred: Writers who do it well? Good ones, or bad ones?

Eleanor: Ignoring the bad.

Good:
* Ann Harris
* Melissa Scott - Dreaming Metal and the other one. Characters in high tech world, spaceship operators. Get into the underground city on a world. The relatives are all in the Union. They go through the maintenance tunnels.
* Rebecca Ore. Slow Funeral. Becoming Alien. Gaia's Toys.
* Maureen McHugh.
* Fred's vampire cabbie books
* Some CJ Cherryh.
* (another author) blue collar Ohio
* Wall-E

Diana: Nina Kiriki HOffman, sometimes. not princes or epic types. The Incredibles.

(I disagree about the Incredibles, I thought they were extremely middle class, am I wrong?)

Fred: William Gibson's Virtual Light. doing the research into bike couriers in San Francisco. How hard is that... go meet people and talk with them about their lives... It's called doing the research.

BSG. the labor conflict. Problems of one great leader, but still they showed the grunts and the tension between mechanics vs. pilots.

Chris: Half Day's Night. Necropolis. Some CJ Cherryh. Ian McDonald, River of Gods, Brazil, Hearts Hands Voices. Working class characters from non-western backgrounds; why are they so often non western, what's going on there? India, Brazil, North Africa. Fantastic books, though.

Eric (something) 1632 Ring of Fire series. Written collectively. When stories are approved they become canon. There was one barmaid in oxford story.

Alan Steel, space roustabouts.

SUMMARY by each panelist

Eleanor: This panel worked. Every other panel about class I've been on went down like the Titanic. This one worked and I didn't have to apologize for having been on it.

Fred: Last year you busted me for looking at the schedule to see what else was happening.

Diana: This panel has made me think about writing and literature in a different way. And about applying this to video games.

Eleanor: What is the working class video game?

Chris: Interesting recs. I'd like to read something by Melissa Scott.

Zine - Entry Level. lots on class!

Mike - quote about no power under the sun... the union makes us strong.

Fred: Writers! Write about working people! Let's all support publishing houses who publish that work! If you have a blog, write about it!

Just for the record: I'm kind of a sleaze

To anyone who might have been horrified in the elevator at the way some people might talk to some other crippled people: when hot chicks offer to frisk me or do a patdown to help me find my phone, they are flirting not being condescending, and I don't mind at all and in fact with stunning inappropriateness had just patted this fine, fine lady on the ass in the lobby since her hands were too full for hugging. It is okay. I do not need to be protected from the bad, sleazy, able-ist elevator lesbians.

We now return to our regularly scheduled Wiscon ale-quaffing and political-panel note taking.

Book review by Moomin

Moomin: *deep in book*
Rook: He's really into it.
Me: Hey Moomin. The author of that book is here at WisCon.
Moomin: WHAT!! Patricia C. Wre wre... WR....
Me: Reedy.
Moomin: is here at Wiscon!
Me: Yes and I just told her that I bought you this book.
Moomin: well, if you see her again tell her that Dealing with Dragons is the BEST BOOK EVER.
Me: ARe you exaggerating?
Moomin: Well, maybe a little, but then, just tell her, Dealing with Dragons is TOTALLY AWESOME!!!!

Meeting 800 people

I am running into EVERYONE and am riding on a sea of bliss at being here and loving everybody.

Georgie and Greg gave me a giant folder full of old WisCon programs and I will surely do something nefarious with them like put them online in an archive of some kind! PROJECT!!! So happy!

must hang out with chris and pennski and olivia_circe and jiawen and... EVERYBODY

How will this be accomplished?! We'll do it! There will be planning, and texting, and last minute changing of plans, and ale-quaffing! (Though I lean towards fancied up gin and tonics rather than ale, and then steady ginger-ale quaffing after pomegranate-and-tonic #2.)

had fabulous dinner with timmi where we discussed fabulous future projects! She told me about the Carte du Tendre and while I was vaguely aware of Madame de Scudery I didn't really get it that she and her whole circle contributed to a giant slashy fanfictiony serial novel or novels that went on for years and were wildly popular. OMG what a great story. We talked about Illicit passage too, and ways of reading and enjoying novels, or fiction, or stories in general (paths through multiple novels) or of reading (and rereading) books ... the experience of them as an adventure in itself. also, about some other things she has written, which I want to read...

Bork texted me at dinner "Look to your left" LOL and there she was with more awesome people...

then ran into giant crowd of awesomeness, like a moving LJ amoeba flowing across the streets of Madison... cofax... veejane... talked about controversies and reconcilations (how to?) ... more people... *dies from flailing fangirl feelings for you all*

what if there was a zombiepocalypse, and hilarity ensued?

Friday night: not another %$#!! race panel


tempest, N.O., moondancer, naamen, nora

- people shooting with a nerf gun at a jeopardy-like board. pirates, zombie apocalypse, tv, food, allies, ?? ???


- lots about the zombies, and vin diesel. naamen had a game where if anyone shouts zombiepocalypse then you have to pretend you're in it and run for the car and bar the door and freak out

what kind of condo complex would you build for some fictional people?

naamen: the very first book of Magic the Gathering, i read it every year, and that one guy that who wants revenge on everyone, put him in the middle and arrange everyone for maximum drama!

tempest: the orphan's tales, because any condo that fits all those characters would have to be carved from like a piece of wood that fell from the sky because of a damn angel, and then grew into a ship and then a condominium...

betsy: zombies are old, what's cool now?

tempest: combine it. zombie unicorns. zombie elves, werewolf vampires, why not? were-klingons. (audience cheers)

audience: There's already been a werewolf vampire series, it's about 8 books in. It's by Carrie Arthur.

(audience groans)




naamen : sick of urban fantasy with only vampires and zombies. i would have medusa!
moondancer: an unsealie fay
nora: why no sealies? sealiepocalypse?
moondancer: sparkles
nora: no because that's the twilightapocalypse.
N.O.: why can't there be a nice apocalypse? like a computer virus where happy things result. happy, good, flowery, shiny things happen!

Utopiapocalypse!

naamen: I just want to say: Rachel Maddow.

(another question)

Tempest: I want to be a total jerk and say if you go to the dealers room right now and buy my book i have already answered this question and it is in a conversation between the dalai lama and nelson mandela.

Nora: the little girl who just come outside after having an argument with her father about why she can't become a doctor and suddenly there's an alien there.

Naamen: Rachel Maddow.

Aud: mixed drink, design it, what would be in it and what would it be called?

Nora: student in college in new orleans: 190 octane. aint' shit for gas but wil start your engine. i don't know what was in it. everclear, blue curacao, cause it was blue, and it was sort of foamy, creme de cacao. Hmm. And some jello.

Naamen: sci fi history, i forget the name of the,

audience: Pan galactic gargleblaster,

Naamen: it was in hitch hikers... Oh. yeah! and in the bar right now William will make you a drink with just *this* much "mix". that's a pan galactic gargleblaster.

Moondancer: smoothie sort of thing, i'm happy with my chocolate monkey that i get at the juice bar.

N.O.: mangoes and pomegranites and raspberries and blueberries and ginger ale. i don't know what i'd call it

Tempest: when i was in college i'd be like i'll go to unos and drink because thtat's fancy! it's not on the menu any more but it's a cookie monster. vanilla ice cream oreos kahlua and vodka and they'd shove a whole oreo cookie in the center and you'd have to find it. It needs some godiva liqueur and chocolate syrup. Diabetic coma drink.

Aud: Cyborgs! If you had to have ...

Nora: Actual drunk people came up with these questions.

Aud: If you had to have any one part of your body replaced by cybernetic equipment, what part would it be and what would your dream cybernetic equipment do?

SCREAMS OF LAUGHTER FROM AUDIENCE THAT DO NOT END

Nora: I woudl have to elect a cybernetic vagina. It can slice, dice, vibrate, and it has a dial. and the dial would be just above it, set according to the skill of the dial manipulator.

Naamen: Youll be sorry.

Nora: this panel is going in the Wiscon Chronicles

me:(holds up computer)

Audience completely destroyed.....

Naamen: who here has seen from dusk till dawn? cybernetic genitalia. then i thought, what else can it do? besides what we want it to do. That scene where the codpiece pops open and it's a gun? I would like a penis that would fie lasers as well.

Aud: As WELL?!

Naamen: as well as doing all the other things. I'd like to be in a dark alley and think oh no i'm unarmed and then go BUT WAIT

(someone) (moondancer?) : id' liek to be prepared for any situation and i like pockets and drawers and shelves... i have this little thing here that everything fits in...

audience dies laughing

Tempest: I'd like cyborg hair. people would be all like Girl your hair looks good! and i'd be like yes it is! and they'd be like "i'm just gonna touch it!" and i'd be like SHING!!!! cybernetic hair. shinnnngggg1

nora: that's not within the scope of this panel!

Tempest: it's not about race! oh your nice red curly hair don't touch it! oh your nice long straight hair! don't touch it! You don't know when cyberhair will come at you!

Aud: Right now, if I was an alien, how would you know?

audience: Oooooooo.

Nora: you did that in a room full of science fiction people, and they're all looking at you funny now.

moondancer : speeaking as a woman i think i'd have to have a closer examination.

Tempest: I'd need some extra equipment like special ssunglasses and then i'd be like Oh crap! you don't have a face!

Naamen: i don't know!!!

someone: what do they do in The Thing? I forget
alaya: just accuse them.
nora: alaya would be the thing.
aud: she would eat you.

aud: you have secret information that someone in the current or previous administration is an alien trying to take over the world? how do you persuade everyone?

moondancer: if it was our current president i'd assume that it was for a very good reason! if it was the previous i'd get on the internet and

nora: i have to go with rahm emmanuel. i for one welcome our new alien overlords!

Tempest: alien in the white house. nancy pelosi's not an alien, she's just kind of weird. if one of them's an alien, all of them have to be aliens. if it's a vast conspiracy , they have to go thru that crap every day? obviously they can't even get the stuff done they have to do. they can't find bin laden, they're not taking over the world. if anyone in our govermnent is an alien it's just taking them too long.

Naamen: does it have to be the us admin? My choice is Tony Blair. as soon as he allied with bush i was like, he's being posessed, totally the pod people, i don't like him any more! and he was exposed as soon as he decided! i don't have to expose him, everyone was like MMmmmm, you're not human any more!

Nora: Special bonus category: CRACK.


Naamen: not as any story where the author lets their id run wild, but i'm going to go with it, i don't care if they just turned into a cat.

Alaya: Twilight sucks! how hard?

Moondancer: there is no drug worse for the children in this country than the twilight series.

Naamen: twilight sucks so hard that it had to have its stomach pumped.

aud: awwwwwwohhhhhhh!!!!

Naamen: was that mean? did i go to far? i thought we were just talkng about cybernetic penises and cybervaginas, i guess i crossed the line!!!

Nora: I cannot saything about it because i am being published by the same company and that shit is paying my bills!

N.O.: twilight has an audience and there are a lot of teenage girls who like twilight and... oh! i feel so bad! Well, twilight was awful, i got 100 pages into it and had to throw it across the room and i went to jump on it, and i ripped it in half.

Tempest: what was previously a secret project.. .but was talking to karnythia about this and we're going to write this togther, bad mary sue, what's up with bella nd her sparkly vampire. i'm going to write a novel that's about a reasonable vampire. oh i'm gonna hang around high school girls. No. my vampires are going to be having orgies and be like, I'm out to kill people. i know her whole story, it's like blaise zambini... a character who's only mentioned once, maybe twice. she has brown hair. that's it...

vito: that book has been written, it's sunshine by robin mckinley.

sparkeymonster: we're the valdemar books by mercedes lackey. you get a choice of magical psychic animal. you can either have a pure white pony with blue eyes, a neutered wolf dog, you can have a magic kitty cat, a magic hawk bird, or a griffin.

nora: it's only magic native americans who can have magic hawks. no wait that's not within the scope of the panel

sparkey: moondancer can have a magic hawk then!

naamen: any animal who will save me as a queer character in that book and make it so i won't die in the end.
CHEERS!!!!

tempest: come on N.O. you know you want a blue eyed pony. who does not want a blue eyed white pony to like trot behind you? prance even?? those other anmals might be a little too angry! they might have a tone issue!

asim : zombie, dinosaurs. awesome? or the most awesome thing ever?

tempest: the most awesome thing ever especially if you pair them with zombie unicorns
N.O. passes again .... N.O. is like in permanent headdesk...
naamen: do i have control of the zombie dinosaurs? then it's the most awesome thing ever.
aud: play the accordion!
naamen: i could sing them some bad journey!
moondancer: jurassic park proves we can't control the zombie dinosaurs, they start breeding

vito: in the spirit of crack. you are in a crack fic. what is the trope that is going to cause you to have sex with the rest of the panel????

AUDIENCE DIES

Nora: we may have to end the panel on that one. I am trapped in a cave in a snowstorm.
naamen: are you trying to say i'm not attractive?
Naamen: starkeymonster pointed out to me where they gain power by sexual intercourse, if i could have sex and every time it would level me up ? i'm down with that.
moondancer: i'm a big sucker for shapeshifters.
N.O.: ....
nora: it's the last question you have to answer
N.O.: ....
Tempest: I am the Mary Sue of this panel. and all who know me will love me and want to buy me things and protect me and want to have sex with me. that'll do it!

HITTING POST, SUCKERS