Praise then darkness, and creation unfinished

One very good thing about this Wiscon was the chance to catch up with roadnotes some. In addition to some conversation as part of the apa group on Friday evening, we had dinner together Sunday evening. I want to make more of an deliberate effort to find her on IM, or maybe talk on the phone: when she was in New York, the IM was often a way of making plans to see each other in person, but Seattle is inconveniently far away for that. The Sunday dinner went well, even though I forgot to ask about spiciness in what I ordered; I wound up eating just a bit of my meatballs, and then some of her ginger chicken. I thought I was used to that food sensitivity, but I somehow was thinking of that cuisine as "mild" and didn't check. It was good to have some two-person time; it's often tempting to put together larger groups at Wiscon, because there are so many people I want to talk to. After dinner, we stopped in at Ragstock because she wanted a skirt for the dance party; I spent $3 on some large, dangly feather earrings, dyed bright blue, which I wore that evening. Earlier Sunday, I had gotten a bit stressed about something, found Velma at elisem's table, asked for a hug, and we talked about nothing in particular while I calmed down.)

Sunday morning I went to about 2/3 of a panel on "body language online," which was about ways that people signal attitude, mood, and such in text. The panelists introduced themselves by talking about the ways/places they started communicating online, which included Usenet and BBSs, and what online communications they're using now. There was some discussion of ways that different usage can signal age: less formal can be read as younger. I think someone said that she uses that, I think to fit in in certain contexts, and Debbie Notkin said that she deliberately doesn't, because she wants people to know that their online community includes 60-year-old women.

Lisa Freitag talked about not capitalizing things when chatting in World of Warcraft, because the layout there puts the "exit without sending" key very close to the shift key. She also said that the thing that most marks her as older than a lot of the other players is one word: "please." Later, in a discussion of apologizing, she said that nobody there ever says "I'm sorry," but she and some other players will accept responsibility for things going wrong, with "My bad." (I think she said she prefers people who will do that, and also those who don't need it too often, because they don't drag the entire group into impossible situations.) There was also some discussion of shorthand/chat-speak in different contexts, and comparisons of the styles of different online groups, as well as of different users in a single space, especially large ones like WoW.

Sunday afternoon I moderated "Madness in Fiction." I'd been worried about this, in part because the programming department sent out email suggesting a significant amount of pre-con prep and communication, and some of my panelists didn't answer my emails, so I didn't have a very good idea of what they wanted to talk about. I don't even try to take notes about panels I'm moderating, so this is sketchy, from memory. My panelists were Sarah Monette truepenny, Catherynne Valente (yuki_onna, Cassie Alexander, and Keffy Kehrli; Sarah is the only one I'd met before, but I'd read and enjoyed both her and Cat's books.) I started by throwing out the idea that in fiction, unlike real life, madness means something: if a character is given a mental illness, the author is doing so for a reason, because it's a marked state. (I think someone disagreed here, but it was a "not always," not "that isn't how it works.") We talked some about different definitions of sanity, and how those can affect people: this included some of the ways the DSM is political and thus reflects changes in what's considered an illness, notably homosexuality, and how the current version of the DSM affects transgendered people.

Sarah talked a bit about her book Melusine and its insane protagonist, and Cat talked (if I recall correctly) about the fuzzy boundaries of sanity in some of her work, but this wasn't an "in my book" sort of panel: I had to push Sarah to say a little about Shadow Unit after someone in the audience mentioned it. It turned out that Cat had written the panel description, and the 19th century was in there because of a strong congruence between the 19th-century English and American definition of "sane" and their expectations of male behavior. (If anyone remembers more about this, please comment.)

I think I did a reasonable job moderating the panel, despite one audience member who spoke up often enough that I wound up saying "Please give other people a chance to talk" (and who felt she needed to respond "but I only wanted to give an example" while I was trying to call on someone else). Part of the problem there may have been that I was calling repeatedly on oursin, but Oursin knows more about the subject than I do and had quite a bit useful to contribute; this other person (whose name I don't know) was less-informed, but that was probably easier to for someone other than herself to recognize.

Meta: if you want to be on programming, please let the programming committee know ahead of time. They may not accept your offer, or they may not put you on the panel you most wanted, but it's worth asking: you don't need to be a writer, published or otherwise.

Before my panel, I got the chance to try some of the homemade ice cream Erik had brought with him. I focused on flavors I can't ordinarily get, meaning I started with nutmeg and rose. The nutmeg was every bit as good as I'd hoped; the rose was also good, but I'd had rose gelato in the past, and I'd never had nutmeg ice cream before (though I have had cinnamon, and back when I could eat such things, chocolate cayenne). The rose was apparently straightforward: a standard ice cream base and commercial rose syrup. I asked Erik if he'd ever made violet, but apparently rose syrup is relatively easy to find, and violet isn't. The Persian lime ice cream was nice, but less intense than the nutmeg or rose; it got me to thinking of taking out my ice cream maker and making lemon ice cream again. (I declined ginger on the theory that I can get that in Chinatown anytime, then this week the place I'd been thinking of was out of ginger.)

I then went to the dealer's room and mentioned the ice cream to elisem, and she asked if I could help truepenny mind her table so she could go try some. I said sure, talked to truepenny a bit, calculated the tax on a bunch of charms, and then she stepped away for a little while, and I sold a pendant while she was gone (IIRC; I remembered the name for her to write down when she got back). More time to talk to her would have been nice, but the same is true of quite a few other people. And I'd much rather have that problem than the one of not having enough cool people to talk to, or of all my friends being otherwise busy, as has happened at some conventions in the past. (I'm not even trying to give a complete list of who I talked to this weekend, or about what; I'd have had to be taking detailed notes at the time, which would likely have gotten in the way of actually doing things.)

The Joanna Russ tribute Sunday evening was moving; I'd never known Russ, even peripherally as part of the same fannish circles, but some of the people who loved and admired her were people I know, including Amy Thompson, who mentioned Russ telling her to read the books she wanted to, and not worry if she couldn't get into the books that their friends were analyzing and talking about just then.

In her Guest of Honor speech, Nisi Shawl talked about creativity and the importance of being willing to do the work. Her framework for that was largely West African religious/spiritual practice (which she identified, but I wasn't taking notes) and Michael Jackson's work; I suspect it resonated more with people who know more of his music and dance.