KJ

So I have now officially attended an entire WSFS Business Meeting, all four days of it (not quite beginning to end because I was a few minutes late on Friday). I learned a great deal about parliamentary procedure, Roberts Rules of Order, and fandom politics. I don't know that I'll ever sit through a whole meeting again, but I feel like I better understand a few things now. The big news, of course, is that the Hugo for Best Game or Interactive Work won!! It will be passed on to the 2023 Worldcon, and assuming all goes well at that Business Meeting, the category will officially run for the first time in 2024. (The motion passed easily yesterday, with no drama and very little discussion, so there's no reason to think it won't also pass in Chengdu.) Big big love and props to justira for all the hard work they did to make this dream a reality. (If you want to congratulate and/or thank them, their Twitter is probably the best way.)

Other highlights of the Business Meeting include the passing on of the two proposed changes to how Fan and Pro are defined being passed on to a committee (which I, uh, volunteered to be on; we'll see what happens there) and the two proposed changes to Best Series failed (one handily, one in a close vote). There was also a ton of procedural drama which I won't get into here, but will probably write about more later.

The other big thing that happened yesterday was of course the Hugo Awards. I enjoyed the ceremony very much -- as I expected, Annalee and Charlie Jane were funny, kept the proceedings moving (it started on time and we were done in exactly two hours), and were clearly having the time of their life up there. I'm already seeing debates around some of the winners -- these conversations about fans versus pros are certainly going to be interesting, and the longlist raises a lot of questions -- and the laughter at the way the Strange Horizons staff was announced is being rightly discussed as a problem. But overall I enjoyed the ceremony very much, and I'm glad I could be there.

Although I'm staying on in Chicago for a couple more days, the con activities have concluded and I believe my friends have all left the site, so I'm declaring my con officially over. I deeply enjoyed getting to see and hang out with so many people and be in fandom space, and I'm really glad I came. Thanks to everyone who made Chicon 8 a great experience for me, whether you knew it or not.

As planned, I started my day at the WSFS Preliminary Business Meeting, which was actually action-packed and filled with drama. While my primary purpose for attending is to support the Best Game or Interactive Experience Hugo, there are a number of other proposals to change the awards from members of the Hugo Study Award Committee -- tweaking best series and changing the definition of fan vs. pro -- that are very controversial and were released without gathering feedback from wider fandom, and in at least one case without the permission of the committee as a whole. Perhaps as a result of this, probably the biggest news out of the entire preliminary meeting is that the Hugo Study Committee has been formally dissolved, although we will be debating all the resolutions they proposed. This may be the first WorldCon where I attend the entire business meeting, so I expect I'll have more to say about the whole experience once it's over.

After lunch with justira and bookish_di, I met krait at the art show. We walked around and admired the shinies, I put a bid in on a necklace, and then we hit the dealers room and admired shinies some more. I then relaxed in my room for a bit (and watched up to the break on last night's episode of Critical Role) until it was time for the live recording of Our Opinions Are Correct. Annalee and Charlie Jane talked about therapy in speculative fiction, with special guest Theo Germaine, a trans non-binary actor who recently starred in a horror movie about conversion therapy. As I expected, it was a fun time -- I enjoy this podcast, and both Annalee and Charlie Jane are excellent live, so it makes for a very good combination.

My last event for the day was a panel on good LGBTQIA+ rep in fiction, which justira was on. The moderator was a little green, but once settled in he did a good job, and it was a nice conversation.

Then it was time for a light dinner in my room, where I am now about to sack out with the rest of Critical Role. I want to get up in time to have a real breakfast before tomorrow's business meeting -- not grabbing a bagel sandwich in the hotel Starbucks with the long line -- so it seemed like a good night to wind down early. See you tomorrow, WorldCon.

In Chicago! So far I have pretty much gotten here, bought dinner to eat in my room, and relaxed after a relatively non-eventful flight. I haven't seen anyone I know or even registered yet (and I'm not sure registration is even open), so it's hard to feel like I'm "at" the con. But tomorrow I have plans to find people and have flagged some programming to attend, so I'm sure I'll settle in then.

If you're here too, let me know!

Your main fandom of the year? I wrote the most stuff for and paid the most attention to Dragon Age -- getting back into the games definitely helped with that, although my replay time dropped off a lot when I started revisiting Ace Attorney, and now it's all about Hades. But I'm about done with Hades, so going back to DA again (next up is Awakenings) is definitely part of the plan for 2022.

Your favorite movie seen this year? Nothing really stands out. Maybe Free Guy as the most recently memorable, anyway.

Your favorite book read this year? Toss up between Jade Legacy by Fonda Lee and The Mask of Mirrors by M.A. Carrak.

Your favorite album or song to listen to this year? Probably the most honest answer to this question is the Ace Attorney Trilogy soundtracks and other Ace Attorney music.

Your favorite TV show of the year? Maybe Ted Lasso (both seasons) or Only Murders in the Building, although Arcane was also excellent.

Your favorite video game of the year? No question, Hades. We haven't reached the epilogue yet -- and may decide it's not worth the grinding it would take to get there -- but it's one of the most perfect mergers of gameplay and storytelling I've ever seen, and its Best Game Hugo award was richly deserved.

Your best new fandom discovery of the year? Not sure I have one.

Your biggest fandom disappointment of the year? WorldCon. I decided somewhat last minute not to attend in person (it sounds like I made the right decision), the timing made it impossible for me to engage virtually, and while for the most part the Hugo ceremony and the slate of winners made me really happy, the last minute announcement that weapons manufacturer Raytheon was sponsoring the ceremony cast a serious shadow over the whole thing. There's a bunch of reasons I haven't talked about that issue in more detail here, but I can say that the finalists were as blindsided as everyone else by that piece of information, and almost everyone was extremely unhappy about it. Probably I should write a real post about this later. I do want to make clear that I do not include the fact that Best Fanzine was awarded to Nerds of a Feather in that disappointment -- NoaF is a fantastic blog run by an amazing team, and their recognition with a Hugo rocket was long overdue.

Your fandom boyfriend/girlfriend of the year? Zagreus (from Hades) and Vi and Caitlin (from Arcane).

Your biggest squee moment of the year? The SF Giants winning the National League West. I wish they'd gotten further in the playoffs, but just watching them pull off that accomplishment was a huge rush.

The most missed of your old fandoms? As usual the answer to this is everything. How do I even fandom anymore?

The fandom you haven't tried yet, but want to? Not sure. Maybe Arcane? Hades?

Your biggest fan anticipations for the coming year? Top of this list is Horizon Forbidden West, the sequel to Horizon Zero Dawn that is due to be released in February.

It's official: I've decided not to attend DisCon III in person. Almost none of my friends are attending, and while I can enjoy other cons solo, WorldCon is just as much about seeing my fandom friends as it is the larger con community. I realized a couple of weeks ago that I was cutting it close in terms of trying to find affordable flights, and that I had basically no interest in doing so -- in fact, I found the very thought of even opening the flight search apps exhausting. So today I cancelled my hotel reservation and emailed the con registration team about converting my membership to virtual.

Although I made my decision before this happened, the mayor of Washington DC recently announced that the district will be lifting its mask mandate, and although the con is still going to have strict vaccination and masking polices, rumor has it the hotel will not be following suit. Although I was able to cancel my hotel reservation on the website, I sent them an email anyway asking them to change their mind. I doubt any one customer will change their mind, but maybe if enough people push back on it, we'll see a change.

I'm a little sad, but it was definitely the right call, and I'm glad to have made the decision final. And now I can hopefully look forward to next year in Chicago, as well as Wiscon next year.

The Hugo Ceremony was today. Some amazing winners, some powerful speeches -- and it's all been overshadowed by the astOUNDingly craptacular performance of ConZealand toastmaster and Hugo MC, George R. R. Martin.

He spent almost three hours bloviating about Hugo and Worldcon history, with the old white dudes of the golden age heavily featured. He referred to Robert Heinlein as "the dean of science fiction" four times in one ten-minute segment. He brought up the greatness of John Campbell so many times it started to feel like trolling. His repeated praise of Robert Silverberg definitely felt like trolling. Between awarding the Astounding Award and the Hugo for Best Fancast, he spent SEVENTEEN MINUTES talking about the history of the Hugo rocket, including a "hilarious" bit where he kept mistaking thing like a juicer and a hood ornament for an older form of the Hugo. He mispronounced many, many names, almost entirely the names of people of color, including the title of Best Semiprozine finalist FIYAH, which is dedicated to promoting the work of Black authors. And worse, the vast majority of his presentation was pre-recorded, which means that 1) he had every opportunity to correct his mistakes with multiple takes and 2) there is every chance that other people watched these videos and said "yep, this is all fine! What a great way to honor an amazing and diverse slate of forward-thinking creators and welcome new people into fandom!"

So that's three hours of my life that I won't get back, but I can recommend a couple of things. As I mentioned, there were a number of wonderful speeches, but nothing set the tone better than R.F. Huang's Astounding Award acceptance speech. It was recorded in advance, but in her words about how to better welcome young new writers of color to fandom, she predicted nearly every damn thing that happened in the ceremony, including the mispronunciation of her name. I have rarely seen a better inditement of fandom. If you have more time, anoutlawlife has performed an important public service by creating an edit of the ceremony that cuts out most of GRRM but preserves all the acceptance speeches and gets the ceremony down to a much more manageable hour and 40 minutes.

I hope ConZealand and GRRM apologize, although I'm not holding my breath. I also hope future Worldcons learn from this. I have a little more hope for that, but not much. With all the big public failures that have happened this year, I'm starting to wonder if Worldcon is worth saving. I hope it is. But it's getting harder to hold on to that hope.

Just like the last time I went to Worldcon, I ended up not being able to do daily write-ups because I was too busy socializing, which on balance I'd say is a good thing (although not good for keeping up with writing goals!).

Some highlights, in chronological order:

-- The WSFS Business Meeting, where the YA award was official named The Lodestar, with little fuss and no controversy at all. forestofglory spoke in favor, no one spoke against, and the motion to ratify passed handily. Hooray!!!

-- Kate Elliott and Rebecca Roanhorse's conversation about epic fantasy, who we see and who we don't, and how they build their worlds. (That room was PACKED, standing room only and dozens of people sitting on the floor, like I'm amazed the fire marshal didn't shut us down.)

-- Nearly the whole gang of us gathered at a panel entitled "Stop Killing Us", which was a discussion of why marginalized characters so often get killed off in our media, and why we should knock it off with that foolishness already.

-- forestofglory lured me to a panel on Smart Cities, and now I want to read everything Annalee Newitz has ever written about cities, and I am totally proposing this topic as a WisCon panel for next year.

-- renay's panel with John Scalzi and Foz Meadows about fan vs author ownership of canons; it was a great conversation, with bonus celebrity "question that is really a comment" from Cory Doctorow.

-- An attempt to go drinking at the Fairmont, but it was much too loud and we ended up having another small room party instead.

-- The excellent life choice of pastries for breakfast (I promise they aren't all mine).

-- A panel on the use and misuse of tropes in media, framed around the question of who actually owns cultural memes anyway, which I feel could have an interesting conversation with the panel on fan ownership. I chose this panel largely on the strength of the panelists, a lineup including Kate Elliott, Saladin Ahmed, and Jeannette Ng; I wasn't familiar with the other two, but they turned out to be Marcela Davison Aviles, a consultant on the film Coco, and author/illustrator Nilah Magruder, whose work I need to look up and start reading immediately.

-- Several passes through the dealers room, with purchase of books and mixers (the proprietor lured me over by noticing my Critical Role shirt) and jewelry, culminating in a far-too-expensive-but very awesome custom order, which I will share when it's ready in a few months.

-- "We Will Survive: Diversity in Sci-Fi and Post-Apocalyptic Stories", possibly the best panel of the con, and I highly recommend this live-tweet of the proceedings. Charlie Jane Anders was the moderator, and I left the panel even more excited for her upcoming turn as GoH at WisCon next year.

-- The Hugo Awards! My second Hugo ceremony also marked my first time just being in the audience, and it was a fine time. John Picacio made an excellent MC, moving the process along but never letting it feel rushed, and I know from talking to participants that he did everything within his power to make them feel comfortable and welcome. There were some fine moments and some wonderful speeches, including a special guest appearance by Felicia Day to present the first YA award. I'm sure you've all heard about N.K. Jemisin's historic win and brilliant acceptance speech by now, but if you haven't watched it yet, you really should.

-- A fun late night at the Hugo Losers Party, which I attended as SFBluestocking's date. It was in a club with a patio, and our group quickly claimed the perfect corner as a place to hang out, snack, drink, and chat without being drowned out by the music.

-- One last breakfast and walk through the dealers room, after which I said goodbye to Worldcon and most of my friends, then gave renay a ride to the next leg of her vacation.

Although it's not completely over for me, because I'll be spending the day with renay tomorrow, for the most part I am content to close the book on this Worldcon and consider what might be next. Dublin? New Zealand? Another US venue? I'll have to see what time and finances allow. For all the stresses leading up to this Worldcon, and all the things large and small that still went wrong, overall I count myself fairly content with my weekend, and especially all the friends I shared it with.

(Written yesterday, accidentally forgot to post.)

I am in San Jose! And although I've been in San Jose many times, I've never been here quite like this: hanging out with good friends and new friends, eating tasty food and playing silly games and looking forward to a few days more.

No programming for me today, because I arrived a little too late. Instead, I picked up a few people at the airport, and we drove down together after a stop at the grocery store for lunch and snacks. Then we checked in, registered, found some other folks for a quick dinner, and then gathered for a room party we'd planned with some other friends.

Okay, so I've only been here for six hours, but I am already confident that the room party is going to be one of the highlights of my con. It was a potluck, with the understandable limitations of folks who were traveling here. I bought bread and made blondies (which were well received), forestofglory brought local cheeses, other folks brought candies and other tasty treats from their parts of the world, and we all munch and chatted about a glorious range of topics: Star Trek, con politics, Stephen Universe, and so many other things. Then we decided to adjourn to the bar for a round of Slash, one of my favorite party games, where there was much laughter to be had over drinks.

Since most people were tired from traveling, we're all settling down a bit early, which is fine by me: gives me a little time to go through the program again, plan out my next day, and catch some of tonight's Critical Role. I'm looking forward to getting to programming tomorrow as well as seeing more people (I've already made plans to connect with SE at a panel before lunch), and just having a nice time disappearing into con space.

If you're here, let me know! I'm staying in the Hilton, and although I have a few things plan, my schedule is mostly quite flexible.

My regular work schedule is officially Monday through Wednesday, but what with one thing and another I've been working a lot of Thursdays lately. But today, I am not (except for a call in a couple of hours), so I am free! (Mostly.) Currently I am doing the "laptop in cafe" thing, which is usually how I spend my non-working Thursday mornings. Then I'll head home for the call, maybe do a little work, and then I'll have a free afternoon until it's time to meet people for dinner. But I'm sure what I'll actually do is sit around and be jealous of everyone who is in Helsinki for WorldCon.

Speaking of WorldCon, have I told you all how very excited I am for next year? WorldCon in my back yard. And so many awesome people are coming. I wish I could invite everyone to my place and have a big party, but it's 1. too small for a large gathering and 2. about 40 miles from the venue, so it's not like we could just pop over. But if you are attending, and plan to spend any time in San Francisco before or after the con, let me know! I am happy to play tour guide. Everyone should come to San Jose, and we will have excellent adventures together.

My connecting flight yesterday was delayed, so I didn't get into the Kansas City airport until after midnight, and it was almost 1am by the time I got to the hotel. Fortunately, my roommates had already arrived and checked in, so all I needed to do was crash. Unfortunately, it was too early for me to try and sleep (given the two hour time difference), so I slept poorly. While I was in go mode at the con, things were fine, but I started fading around 10pm and decided to head back. So I'm now in my hotel room, kicking back and checking in.

There are a ton of interesting sounding panels and readings at this con, way more than I know I'll be able to attend. So I'm picking and choosing as I go, based partly on my own whims and partly on what other people are doing. This is the first time I've ever really come to a con with a group (renay, justira, and ecthroi), and it's a different experience than being mostly on my own. I think I prefer it, although it's also good that we generally each feel comfortable going off on my own -- and of course I know other people here, the most exciting being that I finally met violacea for the first time today!!

Some other highlights: a reading by Courtney Schaffer, whose work I wasn't familiar with before but will certainly be looking for now; a panel about the definition of fan writing, which ended up being mostly about fanfic; the "Bad Boy Woobie" panel, lead by Mark Oshiro, a fun and awesome conversation about who gets to be woobified and why; another fanfic panel, this one about the relationship between fanfiction and pro writers (which can be summed up as excellent panelists, wrong moderator); a live recording of the Ditch Diggers podcast, which is about the business of writing and today featured a panel of three agents answering questions with a hilarious Dungeons & Dragons framing (seriously, go look it up when it's available); and one last great panel, on LGBTQIA representation in media, with a focus on lesser discussed identities such as asexuality, non-binary genders, and polyamory.

Obviously none of this does any of these panels justice, so hopefully I'll be able to get back with more details later. But for now, time to crash. See you tomorrow, MidAmeriCon 2, hopefully with brighter eyes and a bushier tail.