#me posting more on twitter but dw ill be on here and everywhere

[flashdoesahundredyarddash]

Me sharing this first on Twitter and then walking over to Tumblr to post.......

POV...your friend who you're in love with gets a star sapphire ring after saving you...

literally....literally swooning. Hal, he LITERALLY swept you off your feet in battle...

[sophygurl]

Okay I am done with the panel write-up posts and I apologize to all my followers who don’t give a fuck about that kinda thing but WisCon is a big part of my life so I get to totally indulge in it once a year so there. [For anyone wondering this amazing con I keep going on about is a feminist Sci-fi/fantasy con right in my home town and I’ve been going for close to ten years now and it’s like HOME to me]

Gonna post some about the panels I was on, my general con experience this year, and some other stuff under this next read more thingum here. It’ll be more of a personal post than the others. Anything else I write now will be more about fandom-ey stuff that I got up in my feels about and need to hash out. 

BTW though. Hi new followers!! If you’re coming to me due to WisCon specifically or due to my write-up of THAT panel, feel free to introduce yourselves. I use tumblr the most frequently with twitter and FB being a sort of tie for second and DW much more rarely just as an FYI. I’m sophygurl everywhere but FB which is my real name. I’m easily findable and love talking to people! 

So my panels this year were all very different in tone and experience, but all went pretty well? I had fun anyway? I had 4 panels about TV in some way or another and one about Star Wars. Some hinged on serious-ish topics, but I wasn’t on any Serious Business panels this year. 

I wrote up a crap-ton of panel ideas and a lot of them got through. So many that panels I wrote up and wanted to go to were often up against one another and I had to make lots of choices. But it feels really good to me to be involved in that way - in writing up panels, and in being on them, and in going to them and taking notes and writing them up after. There is a lot that I CAN’T do for the con due to my disability stuff. But this is stuff I both can do and enjoy doing so it works out well. I also volunteered to a few people to write up panel descriptions from ideas they have but don’t have fleshed out, so that’s an exciting new thing for me to try out.  So but yea, all five of the panels I was on were panels I also wrote up. 

My first panel was about Women Loving Women on TV. It was me, another panelist, and the moderator. I was a little worried about this panel because the moderator said she was put on the panel by mistake and doesn’t even have a TV (she did fine as a mod - not all mods have to also partake in the talking, they can just ask questions of the panelists), and the other panelist never contacted either of us or showed up for the panel.

Fortunately, I am a well-prepared panelist and felt comfortable talking about this subject for the whole 75 minutes. But then the panel was scheduled against a panel on a similar topic and so anyway - three people showed up for the panel. Fortunately they were kinda fun and engaged people so it became more of a conversational panel than a formal presentation kind and I think it went well? This was my only panel this weekend that I wasn’t the moderator of. 

My next panel was about intersectionality on TV. I was also a lil worried about this one because it was just me and one other panelist, although we had some good chats online before the con so I wasn’t too worried. Fortunately, she convinced a friend to come sit on the panel with us so there was three of us - and both of my panelists had lots of awesome things to contribute. We also had a decent size panel for an evening time slot and got the audience involved too. I pulled one of my goofball tricks and made the audience do a lightning round question of a show they think does intersectionality well and everyone was able to come up with something, which was fun.

Right after that was my panel about SFF sitcoms which was a blast. This was even later in the evening, so we were all really punchy! It was me, a good friend, and another panelist I knew casually before. We wanted lots of audience participation and we got it - getting so many more recommendations than any of the 3 of us had even considered. And since it was a panel about comedies, we really just kinda relaxed and had fun with it.

That was all Friday. Big Day for me.

Saturday night, again a late night slot, I had my Bisexual Representation in TV and Film panel. This one I was not too worried about because I was asked to hand-staff it, since I had strongly suggested the panel be filled with Bi+ folks. So most of the panel was people I already knew and had paneled with before but also I snagged a couple of people I hadn’t previously talked to but who were also awesome.

The panel was in a large room and was fairly full, which I thought was really neat. I had a lot of my own notes on the subject, and did go off on a huge bit about the amazingness of Sara Ramirez and her two bisexual characters, but I also knew from previous convos that my fellow panelists had a lot of interesting things to say and they did not disappoint. It seemed like the audience had a lot of fun and the # for the program was pretty lively, so that’s always a good feeling.

Sunday afternoon was the panel I was MOST excited about. It was all about the themes of The Last Jedi. Like how cool is that? A whole panel not just about the movie in general, but specifically about the THEMES of the movie?! I was pumped that this panel even got through, much less that I got to be on it, much less that I got to moderate it.

And let me tell you something. My panelists? Were amazeballs. Like, the email convos we had ahead of time were already so smart and so nuanced and so full of different ideas and perspectives I was like !!!

And the panel went SO WELL. Like, there was such an equal exchange of like flow and information going back and forth. I feel like I really organized my own thoughts and questions for my panelists well and we all spent the whole panel making grabby hands for the mic because we were all so excited to respond to one another’s thoughts. 

It was FUN and THINKY and I could tell the audience was really engaged and we all laughed and discussed and disagreed and laughed more and it was probably the best time I have ever had on a panel. The #TLJThemes on twitter is just chock-full of both quotes from my awesome panelists and thinky-thoughts from the very smart audience who I sadly did NOT end up having time to get questions or comments from because literally the moment we finally had a pause of any kind? It was right on the dot time for the panel to end LOL. 

So yea, wow, that was just exhilarating? IDK, I am such a nerd.

But yea, so I had everything from 3 audience members to packed rooms and no fellow panelists to crowded tables of excited panelists struggling to get a word in and everything in between and I feel sort of confident that I did well with all of it? So that’s neat. 

Last year I didn’t moderate any of my panels and I found I really missed it, which is why I volunteered to do more moderating this year and it was a Good Life Choice and I plan to do more of it in the future. I adore WisCon for being the kind of place that a basic nobody like myself who has done nothing with her life besides watch a crapton of television can sit on panels and moderate panels and contribute to panels and do things like this that I enjoy and feel like am good at and it’s just such a good. *cuddles the general idea of WisCon*

And beyond the panels - both that I attended and sat on - I had a really wonderful con this year. I was very social and decided to get over my awkwardness and just kinda Utilize my awkwardness because, like, we’re all geeks here so just stop worrying and be a dork and have fun and it worked? I talked to so many people, introduced myself to so many people, made so many connections, hung out more specifically with some of my favorite people, and just sort of made sure to hang out in public spaces and smile a lot and that helped? Who knew. 

There were really only just the three bumps in my otherwise good experience.

1. The panel. If you didn’t already see about this, I attended a panel that very unfortunately derailed into Nazi apologism and it was super gross and upsetting but lots of people spoke up against the panelist in question and the con acted quickly to ban her and are continuing to discuss if she can ever come back so at least that part is good but UGH UGH UGH that was so gross.

2. My laptop broke on me. Fortunately, I have amazing friends and the one I was rooming with doesn’t use hers a ton so she let me use it a lot so I didn’t have to be off-twitter much because a lot of the con happens in the twitter tags and I would have been very sad to miss out on that. I got home and my other amazing friend and roomie helped me get my laptop into the shop quickly and it’s back now which is a huge relief because as a mostly homebound and frankly mostly sofabound extrovert? I need my laptop. I NEED my Laptop. 

3. Life with chronic illness sadly does not stop when you are at an event you love. Even when you save up all your spoons, and spend weeks building up your stamina after a winter of mostly hibernating, and use all of your meds, and allow yourself more caffeine and different foods than usual, and work really hard on self-care. Still, you are chronically ill. 

I am able to push myself a LOT at WisCon because of how it fuels me socially and intellectually and creatively and in so many other ways. But that still only goes so far. And especially with having two late nights on panels - I did not make it to any parties or other late night social events this year. Nor did I make any early morning panels - and there were some I really Really wanted to go to. 

But that’s life and I still got to cram SO MUCH in and spent lots of time in the hot tub soaking and also having poolcon with some amazing folks and had lobbycon and actually made time to have meal/snack times with people instead of just the usual “we should totally make sure to ...”

There were a lot of people I only saw briefly or missed entirely that I’d have loved to have had more time with, but I guess when we finally invent the time turners I can have all that plus go to ALL the panels. 

Oh! And I did go to an amazing reading this year. I often skip readings but I knew a bunch of the people at this one and adore them so I went and it made me feel and think a lot of things and adore these people even more, so there’s that. 

And PHEW I think that’s it. I have tons of thoughts about like, found family and female friendships and stuff mostly about my own amazing platonic poly tribe - some of whom come along to WisCon with me and we get to like BE together in shared living space and then go off and have our own adventures and bond with other people and then introduce one another to those people and it just enhances the whole thing and YAY MY PEOPLE. And uh, yea, one of said peoples who sadly no longer lives in the area just came back over to my place from our other friend’s house and is only going to be here for another day and a half so I’m gonna go run off and spend time with her while I can.