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Wiscon Saturday afternoon

Fantastical Girlhood panel! It was great! Victoria and I basically disagreed on everything -- she has seen only the gross pony episodes, while I remain appalled that Monster High has no outfits without high heels, including the orange jumpsuits in juvie -- but were able to talk fine about the traits of things we liked. Apparently there are a lot more Power Rangers shows than I was aware of and some of the Pink Rangers are stone cold awesome, which is good to know. What do I think of bronies: um, well, I have to split them into at least two groups; some are helpless before the power of the show, and I approve of them, while others are making skeevy-as-hell fanart of pony butts, and I wonder how much of that is them trying desperately to be macho somehow. Rebecca and I emitted ATLA/Korra-squee to the rafters and talked about why ensemble casts are great. Add transparent moderation and a good amount of audience stuff, and my first panel went wonderfully.

Other panels attended:
. Feminist Bottoms (generally good, varied, socially responsible; occasionally assumed that everyone in the room IDed the same way)
. Meta Elements of ATLA (lots of happy awesomeness; some trouble negotiating what we mean by Asian-American vs. Asian-inspired American and whether they'd look the same)

Dinner with pameladean and arkuat, plus oursin, boxofdelights, and someone whose online ID if any I know not. Turns out at least half of us would have preferred a smaller group, but it went fairly well, just polarized into a history/literature conversation and a science conversation. arkuat and I pooled our knowledge and his inspiration to reveal that in Rainbows End the scanning of the shredded library is a metaphor for shotgun-style genome sequencing, which thrilled me to no end. Wim later pointed out that there are some real-life projects where computers reconstruct shredded documents, too. Himal Chuli: delicious, with a great variety of vegetarian options.

I love the Tiptree Auction. Ellen Klages is hilarious, and people's creative works featuring Space Babe were especially amazing this year. Furthermore, I won Flora's Fury. It still ran too long despite revised bidding rules, but was definitely better than usual.

Talked to rushthatspeaks for a little bit. Then, as I have finally decided that I am not obliged to attend parties if I don't like parties, chilled for the rest of the night. I was sorry to miss the Haiku Earrings in particular, but crowded places are crowded. And loud.

Wiscon Sunday

Up early due to light sleeping, I went down to Heteronormativity in YA SF and ate my blueberry bread there. Good panel -- lots of YA dystopias mentioned and critiqued, the passivity of the titles right now (so many of which are past participles), Delirium mentioned as actually referring to homosexuality ("unnaturalism"), appearance policing even when there's no romantic choice possible, overt reproductive or sexual pressures.

[I got Delirium at the library today and was surprised at how good it is. Sure, the whole reason Ordinary Girl questions her dystopia is presented as being An Outsider Boy With Golden Eyes, but there is a lot more going on than that -- some good slow reveals of just how fucked up things are, decent worldbuilding, and lots of relationships among women and girls.]

Geek Girls and Self-Objectification panel: already complained about it. Check out http://doctorher.com/?p=1208 for an updated presentation by Courtney Stoker on the same subject as the panel's source material.

Lunch: more delicious farmer's market bounty, hanging with roommate and her friends.

Reproductive Justice: lots about the different things this can mean, not just the ability to decide when to be pregnant, but access for both parents, the ability not to fear your kids will be taken into foster care, and more interesting issues. Mostly not that SFnal, though we got into some works at the end. The Testament of Jessie Lamb won awards, but the premise is appalling (pregnancy kills you! your choices are to die before or after the baby is born; also you are comatose at the time!) and one of the awards is the Man Booker Prize, so enough about that forever. It did remind me of The Clockwork Rocket, which I recommended. And in When She Woke by Hilary Jordan the scarlet A is for abortion and covers your entire skin.

Shoujo Fairy Tales: Obviously Princess Tutu was the queen of this panel, and I tweeted Håll Om Mig Nu as a panel summary. (yes, I rewatched it when I did that, taking betsy somewhat aback when she came in to very loud music partway through; and yes, I also rewatched it right now; and yes, I still got chills both times.) A few notes on Japanese fairy tales: Natsume Yuujinchou, Xxxholic, Kamichu; Susan Napier, Thomas Lamar.

[Don't go looking for my Twitter account expecting content or anything; it's just for Twit-specific things.]

I debated chilling in the room at that point, since I was tired, but found myself unable to chill while Eleanor Arnason was reading something. The thing that killed me dead at the Aqueduct reading, though, was Liz Henry's poem about the moon landing. Kiini Ibura Salaam's stories were very good, too. And this is where the Wiscon Chronicles explaining Moonfail were explained aloud. I bought all three books.

Dinner with boxofdelights, who knows me too well, at Buraka. Wonderful as always. Quick stop at Ragstock for a shirt to go with my other silk clothing-swap skirt; I genderfloomped femme this year, which I had basically planned, if only through thinking men's clothes are too hot for dancing in.

When we came in, the line for the dessert salon was still going in, and it was halfway through its timeslot. Why people do that I will never understand. I went away for a little while, came back and got leftovers (seedy strawberry-rhubarb crumble and perfect blackberry panna cotta), and watched the speeches just fine. Really liked Andrea Hairston's about SF and expectations, and bucking them to fulfill SF's promises in her own way.

After that I danced all the things. Once again I fail at dancing with people, but I think I can sometimes tell when they want to now? If you grab my hands, even I will definitely clue in, though I am still crap at doing anything about it. (Sorry, S!) The "cops" -- probably hotel security -- came by to legitimize our rocking at about 2am, and we broke it up around 2:30.

Wiscon Monday, Madison Tuesday

Monday:
Slept until 10:45! Ate the little rhubarb pie with a spoon cleverly kept from the dessert salon.

Visited art show (already cleaning up and taking away) and dealers' room, messed about generally. I was going to sit outside and read, but it started raining as soon as I got to the Capitol. The anti-Walker protesters had a difference of opinion about whether it was a good idea to go under the trees (due to rain) or a bad one (due to possible lightning) but settled under one anyway. Too wet to read even under there, so I went to Michelangelo's and knitted and finished Flora's Fury.

Lunch at like 2:30, in a hole at Nick's. Eventually made it to the Dead Cow party, hung out with Lenore and Lise et al. talking about con organization and world travel. Felt kinda fannish for a change. Missed some people I was looking for, but scrammed when it started filling up too much and I wanted to check on some home things. Hid out in the room the rest of the night.

Tuesday:
Breakfast with roommates in the hotel restaurant. Crossed off my life experiences list "get drenched in soda spilled by waitstaff." Changed clothes, which were conveniently right upstairs, though inconveniently packed already.

Surprisingly, I felt that I had seen the botanic garden enough during my last three visits. I went to the lake. I tried to read the Onion, but it was way too windy; Best Science Writing 2011 was more physically manageable.

It was really windy.



Also sunny, so eventually I was worred about burning and tired of so much wind. I walked along Gorham and found a little park.



Look at the caustics from the water on that three-tiered birdbath!



Peacefully read about hormone therapy for menopause until lunchtime. (Summary: Timing and molecular composition are very important!) Then went to Casa de Lara for enchiladas and a margarita, then A Room of One's Own, which is moving down a block in July. Then gelato, then time for the airport shuttle.

My flights went smoothly, and I wasn't randomly screened for once. The end.