Confessions of a Liberal Puritan

Part 1 (covering the journey to and the first two days of WriterCon) can be found here

And the saga continues . . .

Sunday morning started with eggs and sausage (and raisin bran, 'cause you can't really enjoy a con if you're irregular, now can you?), as well as the obligatory large quantities of coffee, in the Hospitality suite. I had the best of intentions to attend one of the morning panels, really I did, but somehow I ended up talking about the fic library and about Star Trek and other serious matters with a number of wonderful people, and I didn't get my butt in gear soon enough. In retrospect, I really wish I'd attended dancetomato's Science vs. Magic panel, 'cause I hear it was really good and I remembered her fondly from the religion panel at WriterCon 2006. Oh, well.

Since it was too late to join a panel without being disruptive, I decided to mosey down to the Magic Box one more time (and ended up fetching a coffee for the guy selling the cool T-shirts, who was dying for a caffeine fix -- so that's one life saved, at least, if I need to justify my non-attendance at church that morning!). I'd already bought my two Dr. Who-themed T-shirts (the "Blink" shirt and the tie-dyed TARDIS number) and effectively blown my shopping budget, so I sat down to wait for the raffle drawing on behalf of myself and texanfan, who'd given me her tickets in case she was still in the Writer's Salon workshop at the time of the drawing.

Naturally, texanfan won perhaps the heaviest (literally, in terms of actual weight, since I needed to carry those things around until she got out of class) set of prizes, and I won a "Ghost of the Robot" CD in the 'orphan' drawings for the prizes and parts of prizes that the first winners didn't want. Plus, I got that much-needed morning workout lifting weights, as I toted my friend's prizes up to the Hospitality suite -- where she eventually donated all but two of the books to whoever wanted them, while the folks at our lunch table started working on her orphaned C.S.I. jigsaw puzzle.

"...And there was much rejoicing."

About the "-isms" panel ("Racism, Sexism, and Homophobia in Fandom"), let me start by saying that from my narrow and necessarily limited perspective, it actually went much better than I'd feared, though not nearly as well as I'd hoped. (Of course, my expectations for just how badly it could have gone may be distorted by some very un-Christian gatherings I've attended, at which the ordination of women and LGBT persons was discussed with a notable lack of love or mutual respect and a great deal of vitriol. As long as no-one is throwing "God says..." or "God is on my side" bombs at anyone else, I actually have something to be glad of. Which is sad, in and of itself, I guess.)

All the credit for the good in the panel goes to the panelists -- kalichan, invisible_lift, rahirah, and xionin -- who put a great deal of "energy, intelligence, imagination, and love" (the qualities my church calls for in its ordained teaching and ruling elders, and so the first words that come to mind when I see gifted people freely giving of themselves) into the preparation and leadership of this panel. invisible_lift was the first to suggest supplemental handouts, and rahirah found and copied and brought to the con those handouts on white privilege and derailing to fill in some of what a 90-minute panel session could never hope to even begin to cover. kalichan came up with excellent topics for discussion, many of which joined the long list of issues that weren't touched on before the time ran out (like the issue of power differentials in fandom vs. canon, and whether fanfic and fan art has an obligation to be activist in the name of truly participatory culture, correcting the failings of the source material). xionin agreed to join the panel on much less than 24 hours' notice, and shared some extremely painful experiences with racism from fellow fans to illustrate the urgent reality of the evils named in the panel title. And that just brings us up to the start of the panel, and doesn't begin to account for all they contributed for the remaining 85 minutes, or in conversations afterward and in ongoing discussions now.

Meanwhile, I figured I had just one job as moderator (apart from trying not to get in the way), but when the moment came near the end of the panel session, I didn't see it coming in the first place, and froze up in the second place, only reacting after the 'f---ed up' grenade had gone off in everyone's faces. Not so good.

As far as the specific content of the panel is concerned, others -- including the panelists themselves -- have already written about it in greater detail and with better insight, I think, so I won't try to repeat in this post what so many have said better in other journals.

I confess that I hid out for the remainder of Sunday afternoon, first in the Star Trek (TOS) snark-fest ("The Trouble with Tribbles" and "Mirror, Mirror" -- which were revealed to be much slashier than I had remembered!) and the closing ceremonies. missmurchison and I made periodic visits to the Dead Writer Party that night, in case any help was needed yet in packing up or cleaning up, and in order to rescue any stray alcoholic beverages which might otherwise go to waste.

That first glass of wine might have been a mistake, but the refill certainly was, since it only exacerbated my weariness and my difficulty in hearing what others were saying in conversation. I actually hear quite well -- don't get me wrong -- but just as my eyes seem to go off in different directions and have trouble focusing more when I'm tired, so also my ears seem to have greater trouble picking out one voice from all the other voices in the room when I'm worn down. At that point, I was only clearly distinguishing about three words out of every ten spoken to me or next to me. Just as I'd done at the opening party on Thursday night, I started watching everyone's faces as much as I could, in hopes of using visual cues to fill in the missing words from a mental list of "most common con talk". However, judging by the strange looks I occasionally received, I didn't always guess correctly and apparently came out with some noticeable non sequiturs. I took that as my cue to call it a night, in spite of the urge to stretch out the last few hours of con conviviality to store up like nuts for a long, cold winter.

So, to anyone I might have spoken with on Sunday night, if I returned an inappropriate or nonsensical reply to you please believe that it was not through inattention or inebriation. I was simply unable to correctly fill in the 70% of your words that were lost in the background clutter of other conversations all around us. (That's probably another reason why parties, and especially parties with music, tend to put me on edge, since focusing on one voice among all the other voices and sounds becomes so much more difficult, and I hate appearing foolish.)

astridv had to leave early Monday morning, but Miss M and I checked out fairly late and headed back for Cedar Rapids. Our travel time was lengthened by a leisurely breakfast/lunch at Perkins (yes, only the most haute of cuisine for us!) and by a stop for gas that began to bear an uncomfortable resemblance to Buffy's experience with the mummy hand and the afternoon shift at the Magic Box that seemed to go on forever (ask Miss M about it sometimes, since she's the one who bore the brunt of that detour into the Twilight Zone).

Monday ended happily (for me, at least!) with a marathon viewing of season 3 of the Paul Gross series "Slings & Arrows", which I'd been wanting to see for a long time and which the Murchison family happened to have on DVD, and even watched with me for the last few episodes.

Miss M had to work out of her home office on Tuesday, with brief breaks, but I enjoyed a lazy day of reading one of the many J. D. Robb "...in Death" novels she'd loaned me, helping to water the herbs and tomato plants which had gone thirsty in Miss M's absence, and catching up on a couple of science fiction series on the DVR. The highlight of the day, though, was going to see the "Star Trek" movie for my third time and Miss M's second at the local budget theater.

I'd seen it alone both the previous times (well, alone except for a large number of strangers in the seats around me) and Miss M had seen it with her non-Trekker family, so we both enjoyed seeing it again with a fellow fan, nudging one another at the "in joke" moments, and squeeing and rejoicing in great detail afterwards.

For instance (and I hope I'm safe in assuming that nobody needs mild spoiler warnings for the movie at this point?), I hadn't previously noted how much the character of the new James T. Kirk resembles Lois McMaster Bujold's Miles Vorkosigan, at times. I got a very Illyan-Miles kind of vibe from that final look between Pike and Kirk near the end, making me think, "Be careful what you dare this young man to do, for he may exceed your expectations to a terrifying degree." Plus, there's that whole bluffing (mostly) your way from academy misfit to commander of a starship in a few short days -- using gall, startling competence, and sheer force of personality -- that Miles and New-Jim both seem to share.

Or maybe that's just me?

Wednesday was spent driving ten and a half hours straight (with two brief stops for gas, one of which included a side-trip to pick up fast food for the road), in order to get back to TN while there was still a bit of daylight left -- just long enough for me to nip around back and pick all those ripe and over-ripe tomatoes (cherry, yellow pear, and my first ripe Mr. Stripey) and raspberries (red, and a few gold) which had accumulated in my absence. I have my priorities, after all, and during August fresh raspberries and home-grown tomatoes seem to rank pretty high, for some reason.

[Okay, that's MOST of the post I wrote this afternoon and which LJ promptly ate. I think the original version was more eloquent, or maybe even more coherent, but this is what I could piece together tonight.]