WisCon 36!
May. 30th, 2012 14:19![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
starladyI am writing this from my MegaBus to Minneapolis.
I had a fantastic time at WisCon - I think, of the three I've been to thus far, this one was my favorite all around. I personally had a fantastic time, the instances of fail seemed to be on the low end from what I heard, there was a lot of interesting programming, and also some people whom I greatly respect said some very flattering things about me and things I've done (and people kept asking me to sign their copies of The WisCon Chronicles!).
I had to get up at 4am to get my flight on Friday morning, but once I cut in line to get my bag on my flight and hoofed it to my gate in Philly the whole process was pretty smooth. My aunt got me at the airport and we drove out to her house while she gave me the family update and then I drove back to Milwaukee to Skype a friend for a meeting and then getellen_fremedon at the airport. This year's construction made me a bit late, but we went to Kopp's and had burgers and custard (Kopp's is the best) and then drove to Madison. I did 75 most of the way, so we made pretty good time, and then I accidentally swindled the hotel people out of a parking pass. Win!
Friday night was the vid party, which was awesome in general, though I missed the first few vids drivingwere_duck home for laptop speakers. There were technical difficulties with the initial showing of my vid Too Big to Fail, but were_duck kindly stopped the playback of the problem copy and then they screened it first in the Premieres and Nearly New show, which was awesome. I've updated the vid post with a download link for the Quicktime file - the mp4 was encoded at YouTube's specifications, and apparently those don't work well for anyone else. It was really great to get to see people watching my vid as a group, because they saw a lot of things in it that I never would have, such as the shots that got laughs from the group, and people seemed to like it - Alexis told me that Andrea Hairston mentioned my vid on one of her panels, which is awesome. I really enjoyed the Vid Party overall, and I hope it happens again next year (I will put in actual effort to help that happen, unlike this year where I did nothing), though I do think the singalong list needs to be retooled to vids that are set to slightly more familiar songs, maybe.
Saturday we drove in and had pastries and magic coffee at Graze, and then I had brunch at the Old-Fashioned and went to my two panels in the afternoon with the vid party panel between, at whichwere_duck said some things about my vid that I never would have thought of but made total sense. It was a really interesting panel overall, and I felt our my two panels went well. I also enjoyed the guerrilla Twilight panel quite a lot. Dinner was a private room at the Brocach, which I like a lot, though next year I do want to try to get to more Wisconsin-ish places if possible. I've not had a bad meal in Madison, though, so really I'm usually happy to eat wherever. Saturday night I finally caught some of the Tiptree Auction - it is hilarious, as promised - and we rolled around the parties - Chicks Dig Comics had fantastic test tube shots, and I kept up my "five minutes flat" record at the Haiku Earrings Party, this time with delicious ice cream tastings! I had the maple/toasted hickory nut, which was excellent.
epershand and I got back to were_duck's apartment around midnight, and for the next two hours were treated to an impromptu bad!karaoke concert by her downstairs neighbors. Their "Tubthumping" rendition was so bad I just couldn't stop laughing, though I fell asleep before they got to Rihanna's "S&M."
Sunday morning I went to the "Gender Variant Characters in SFF" panel, which was good, and then had breakfast from Michelangelo's. I had lunch at Noodles & Co. (I like Noodles, okay, and I've not seen it in California or Jersey) - the truffle mac is excellent - and then went back for more panels, including one on Fairy Tales in Anime and Manga, at which I was finally on a panel with my con-friend Lisa, and which went pretty well, I thought. After that I went to the Wiscon/Japan connection panel and then went to dinner with Mari Kotani, Onouchi Min, their interpreter, and Emily Jiang, at Kabul. I had some really good duck streusel roundels and we had a lot of fun speaking English and Japanese. After I walked back to the hotel I changed in![[twitter.com profile]](https://p2.dreamwidth.org/e0caa790ec10/-/twitter.com/favicon.ico)
asfrankl's room and then bought a dessert salon ticket and cut into the dessert line with my friends. I had about five desserts in the end and we had a lovely time at the GoH speeches. I really, really liked Andrea Hairston's; it was basically performance art, complete with Star Trek yodeling and banjo accompaniment, and she is really good. Debbie Notkin's speech was completely different and also great. Sunday night I wound up hanging out with the awesome futuransky for a while, drunkenly talking about academia and ambition and whatnot in the sixth floor hallway. AWESOME. We ducked into the GenderFloomp party long enough to put on fake mustaches and then went for more liquor. Good decision, I think.
Monday morning were_duck and I hauled ourselves out of bed and into town to the panel on De-Gaying and Whitewashing YA, which had Malinda Lo and Andrea Hairston and Neesha Meminger and was pretty damn awesome - I wish I hadn't had a conflict with Malinda's other panel, because pretty much she brings the awesome all the time, and everyone was pretty great. Note to self: read and review more books with non-white, non-straight protagonists. I totally missed the Sign-Out in favor of going on a quest for an accessible lunch space withmeloukhia, jesse_the_k and many awesome other people, including sparkymonster who joined us halfway through, which turned out to be the hotel restaurant. As I related at the table, the Wiscon hotel restaurant pwns the shit out of the former Sirens hotel restaurant.
I lobby-conned it up in the afternoon for a while - I didn't even get to see ellen_fremedon oraria again before they left - and then asfrankl and I went to Michael's Custard and I had Blue Moon custard, which is basically the arch-Wisconsin flavor and one of my favorites before we had dinner at her house, which was very nice except for the part where I wandered into an argument with some doctrinaire Marxists, about which the less said the better, but I repeat my assertion that people who think I'm tactless don't know what I keep on the inside of my skull. Still, it was a lovely time and I was very grateful for the invite, after which I headed back to the hotel and drank sake and watched vids with raanve wrdnrd, and many awesome others. We raided Dead Cow for comestibles and then headed home and watched some more vids before collapsing.
Yesterday were_duck and I got up to eat breakfast at La Brioche withasfrankl, which was awesome - we all ordered the eggs Benedict, which were delicious, proving that we had good group-think, which was further proven when we later spontaneously had a conversation we'd all been wanting to have. We left asfrankl and then I drove were_duck to work and I headed for the Redamte coffee house to frantically throw myself at all the work I haven't finished. Thanks to laceblade I got my car from in front of Room before they towed it and then I headed to Brookfield to meet my aunt and cousin for dinner at Noodles. I read Mastiff in Barnes & Noble for a while beforehand; it seems really good! Also, I hate malls.
Today I had to get up at 6:30 to go with my aunt (the other one) to drop off my cousin and then see my grandparents before she dropped me at the Amtrak station in Milwaukee. More about the latest in the family saga in a following post, but I really do appreciate, and miss, the Wiscon atmosphere and people already. I love you guys. My life would be so much bleaker without you, and I'm so lucky to have all of you in it.
I had a fantastic time at WisCon - I think, of the three I've been to thus far, this one was my favorite all around. I personally had a fantastic time, the instances of fail seemed to be on the low end from what I heard, there was a lot of interesting programming, and also some people whom I greatly respect said some very flattering things about me and things I've done (and people kept asking me to sign their copies of The WisCon Chronicles!).
I had to get up at 4am to get my flight on Friday morning, but once I cut in line to get my bag on my flight and hoofed it to my gate in Philly the whole process was pretty smooth. My aunt got me at the airport and we drove out to her house while she gave me the family update and then I drove back to Milwaukee to Skype a friend for a meeting and then get
ellen_fremedon at the airport. This year's construction made me a bit late, but we went to Kopp's and had burgers and custard (Kopp's is the best) and then drove to Madison. I did 75 most of the way, so we made pretty good time, and then I accidentally swindled the hotel people out of a parking pass. Win! Friday night was the vid party, which was awesome in general, though I missed the first few vids driving
were_duck home for laptop speakers. There were technical difficulties with the initial showing of my vid Too Big to Fail, but were_duck kindly stopped the playback of the problem copy and then they screened it first in the Premieres and Nearly New show, which was awesome. I've updated the vid post with a download link for the Quicktime file - the mp4 was encoded at YouTube's specifications, and apparently those don't work well for anyone else. It was really great to get to see people watching my vid as a group, because they saw a lot of things in it that I never would have, such as the shots that got laughs from the group, and people seemed to like it - Alexis told me that Andrea Hairston mentioned my vid on one of her panels, which is awesome. I really enjoyed the Vid Party overall, and I hope it happens again next year (I will put in actual effort to help that happen, unlike this year where I did nothing), though I do think the singalong list needs to be retooled to vids that are set to slightly more familiar songs, maybe. Saturday we drove in and had pastries and magic coffee at Graze, and then I had brunch at the Old-Fashioned and went to my two panels in the afternoon with the vid party panel between, at which
were_duck said some things about my vid that I never would have thought of but made total sense. It was a really interesting panel overall, and I felt our my two panels went well. I also enjoyed the guerrilla Twilight panel quite a lot. Dinner was a private room at the Brocach, which I like a lot, though next year I do want to try to get to more Wisconsin-ish places if possible. I've not had a bad meal in Madison, though, so really I'm usually happy to eat wherever. Saturday night I finally caught some of the Tiptree Auction - it is hilarious, as promised - and we rolled around the parties - Chicks Dig Comics had fantastic test tube shots, and I kept up my "five minutes flat" record at the Haiku Earrings Party, this time with delicious ice cream tastings! I had the maple/toasted hickory nut, which was excellent. epershand and I got back to were_duck's apartment around midnight, and for the next two hours were treated to an impromptu bad!karaoke concert by her downstairs neighbors. Their "Tubthumping" rendition was so bad I just couldn't stop laughing, though I fell asleep before they got to Rihanna's "S&M." Sunday morning I went to the "Gender Variant Characters in SFF" panel, which was good, and then had breakfast from Michelangelo's. I had lunch at Noodles & Co. (I like Noodles, okay, and I've not seen it in California or Jersey) - the truffle mac is excellent - and then went back for more panels, including one on Fairy Tales in Anime and Manga, at which I was finally on a panel with my con-friend Lisa, and which went pretty well, I thought. After that I went to the Wiscon/Japan connection panel and then went to dinner with Mari Kotani, Onouchi Min, their interpreter, and Emily Jiang, at Kabul. I had some really good duck streusel roundels and we had a lot of fun speaking English and Japanese. After I walked back to the hotel I changed in
futuransky for a while, drunkenly talking about academia and ambition and whatnot in the sixth floor hallway. AWESOME. We ducked into the GenderFloomp party long enough to put on fake mustaches and then went for more liquor. Good decision, I think. Monday morning were_duck and I hauled ourselves out of bed and into town to the panel on De-Gaying and Whitewashing YA, which had Malinda Lo and Andrea Hairston and Neesha Meminger and was pretty damn awesome - I wish I hadn't had a conflict with Malinda's other panel, because pretty much she brings the awesome all the time, and everyone was pretty great. Note to self: read and review more books with non-white, non-straight protagonists. I totally missed the Sign-Out in favor of going on a quest for an accessible lunch space with
meloukhia, jesse_the_k and many awesome other people, including sparkymonster who joined us halfway through, which turned out to be the hotel restaurant. As I related at the table, the Wiscon hotel restaurant pwns the shit out of the former Sirens hotel restaurant. I lobby-conned it up in the afternoon for a while - I didn't even get to see ellen_fremedon or
aria again before they left - and then raanve wrdnrd, and many awesome others. We raided Dead Cow for comestibles and then headed home and watched some more vids before collapsing. Yesterday were_duck and I got up to eat breakfast at La Brioche with
laceblade I got my car from in front of Room before they towed it and then I headed to Brookfield to meet my aunt and cousin for dinner at Noodles. I read Mastiff in Barnes & Noble for a while beforehand; it seems really good! Also, I hate malls. Today I had to get up at 6:30 to go with my aunt (the other one) to drop off my cousin and then see my grandparents before she dropped me at the Amtrak station in Milwaukee. More about the latest in the family saga in a following post, but I really do appreciate, and miss, the Wiscon atmosphere and people already. I love you guys. My life would be so much bleaker without you, and I'm so lucky to have all of you in it.
(no subject)
Date: 2012-05-30 21:34 (UTC)Do you remember enough details to do a report?
(no subject)
Date: 2012-05-30 21:53 (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2012-05-30 23:09 (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2012-05-31 01:38 (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2012-05-31 12:15 (UTC)Sounds like an excellent con. I'd be interested in the YA panel because I feel like they get a lot of pressure to white wash.
(no subject)
Date: 2012-05-31 14:58 (UTC)Yay hotel! The only problem with the hotel is that the coffee won't be as good.
(no subject)
Date: 2012-05-31 14:59 (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2012-05-31 15:01 (UTC)Yup, Wisconsin! I was driving around quite near our mutual stomping grounds, it was good.
(no subject)
Date: 2012-05-31 16:06 (UTC)