WisCon 45: Day Three

It's not that late and yet I'm tired -- it was a long day. I think expending so much social energy all at once took more of a physical toll than I was expecting. Still, great day! In bullet form:

• Slept in a little bit, then quick Starbucks breakfast before the first panel, which was on being a fan of problematic things; it covered some of the same ground as mentor monsters yesterday (and with one of the same panelists, Jessica Finn (pelicanismo

• A nice laid back lunch of pasties with forestofglory in the Capitol Square

• Attended two afternoon panels, one on fanfics that have outsized influence on their fandoms (and sometimes even beyond their fandoms) and one (featuring the one and only readingtheend!) called "How Dead Is the Author, Really" about applying the critical principle of "death of the author" in the age of social media, when most authors are not only very much alive but able and willing to engage with readers and reviewers, for good or ill. The latter was an excellent panel, another best of the con, with some thinky thoughts that I'll have to chew on more when I'm more awake.

• Last panel of the day was my third as a panelist: City as History, City as Liberator. This had almost the same panel description as the virtual panel I was on in 2020, but even with the same moderator we had a fairly different focus: we talked about how the pandemic has changed our relationship to the environment, about how cities can inspire and reflect social change movements, about cities as characters, about non-traditional SFnal cities like spaceships and space stations. We got a lot of kind words afterwards, and if you're a con attendee with access to the Discord, I highly recommend checking the thread out -- we had a few notetakers who provided a really good sense of what we talked about and saved all our recs.

• A quick dinner, a little room relaxation, and then the annual dessert salon with GoH speeches. For COVID safety reasons, we did speeches and presentation first, then dessert to go after. First they replayed Rebecca Roanhorse's excellent GoH speech from WisCONline in 2020 -- which still resonates two years later, but in some different ways than it did before -- and then Sheree Renee Thomas gave one of the most beautifully poetic speeches I'd ever heard.

• The Otherwise presentation, which focused on the 2019 and 2020 winners because the jury hasn't selected winners for 2021 yet, and then the traditional filk which was instead about the persistence and resilience of WisCon in the face of all the adversity it's faced these last few years.

• And finally, speaking of that adversity, we got an update on the Save WisCon fundraising and volunteer recruitment effort, which was a resounding success: SF3 raised more than enough money and got enough support to not only succeed in running the con this year, but committing to WisCon 46 in 2023. This was followed by the announcement of next year's amazing guests of honor: Rivers Solomon and Martha Wells!!!

So, it's been a great con, and I can only hope next year is even better -- and maybe a little less fraught with pandemic concerns, although I've given up even guessing at this point. But it's not over yet -- one more panel for me, and then my flight isn't until 5:30 so I'll attend the postmortem and maybe get to hang out with folks a little more.