Susan

Hey sweetpeas! Just a quick update to say that I'm going to be slightly more out of it than usual until about... Tuesday? Maybe? I volunteered to do the transcriptions for CoNZealand Fringe, so I'm trying to concentrate on getting those done for now.

(The Fringe isn't officially part of CoNZealand, and it's free, so you should just be able to watch them on youtube whenever! And all of the names I've recognised have been people who are cool, so this is honestly a fun project.)

The only downside is that I'm not monitoring the WorldCon drama as thoroughly as I would be normally, but what I've seen has been SURE A THING.

Hello my darlings! I am F I N A L L Y talking about Worldcon! It happened! There was a lot of stuff! I will never stop being confused that the academic track is on a completely different schedule to EVERYTHING ELSE in a way that is maximally inconvenient! I think I've kinda accepted that there is Too Much Stuff and occasionally just going "No, I am going to sit outside and damn the consequences" for an hour is fine too.

This year was a) the first time I've been on a flight on my own, b) the first time I've ever been to Ireland, and c) the first time that I've been in charge of booking the hotel rooms, so I was a LITTLE frazzled. (I did in fact cock up the hotel room booking, by the way; I apparently forgot that Worldcon ran until the Monday.) I shared with redrocketpanda and itsreileyright and they were both absolutely lovely! (redrocketpanda is doing his dissertation on robots in popular culture, and looking for fieldwork/interview opportunities, and itsreileyright is an expert on queer history, they're both REALLY COOL.)

My obligatory livetweet is over here! I've not written up the full panel notes for everything I went to, but if there's anything where you go "Ooh, I want more details of that," let me know and I'll type up what I have! As a fair warning, I continue to guess at the spelling of names and titles! I've tried to correct where I can, but there are some things that I haven't been able to google for an answer.

Other general stuff:

• I hadn't prepared for Dublin to have fucking London prices, oh my god. Three euros for a bottle of pop! What!


• I did mostly live on the cooked breakfast at the hotel and stopping by the Tesco on my way home for a meal deal or something?


• I LOVE that so many panels had everyone state their pronouns in their introduction! Like, it's inclusive AND fantastically useful for me when I'm taking notes! (I have almost definitely fucked up someone's pronouns, I'm really sorry if I have, I've tried to check twitter and author bios where I've not had them written down but if I still fucked up please let me know and I'll fix it.)


• Dublin has trams! I didn't know this, but it meant that I got a week-long pass for the trams and was perfectly happy.


• Apparently the queueing system was a nightmare for everyone involved, because the queues had to snake and be cut off by doors and all the rest of it, but ngl, my main issue tended to be once I was IN the queue, because that was a LOT of people.


• I am really sorry to anyone I was introduced to, because I have forgotten SO MANY NAMES AND HANDLES! If you've added me on a form of social media and I've not followed you back, please let me know so that I can fix it! Or if I owe you an email and it hasn't arrived, poke me about that too!

Thursday
( Read more... )

These are my notes on the Patreon: The Evolution of Supporting The Arts panel, moderated by jainefenn (audiobook patreon) and panelled by bookpunks (band patreon), garethlpowell (whose patreon I can't actually FIND), and legendgerry (patreon).

( Read more... )

Hello my darlings! I am back from Nine Worlds and I've finally started writing up my con diary! I meant to do it sooner, but I decided to take Monday to relax and hopefully not get con crash? (Dark suspicion: I crashed on Sunday.) We'll see how I did.

So behind the cut are my magical London adventures! I am going to tag people by their handles when I know them, and I am really sorry if it looks like I'm name dropping because that is 100% not my intention, and doubly sorry if we hung out and I didn't tag you! I'm gonna be splitting this into two posts, because hello, I'm me; if you want the shorter version with more pictures, I livetweeted it mostly in one handy thread!

General
( Read more... )

Thursday
( Read more... )

Friday
( Read more... )

End part one! Part two!

Representation in Dating Sims was one of the three panels that I pretty much WINDMILL SLAMMED the favourite button on on the Nine Worlds Schedule. (The other two were the LGBTQI in Anime panel, and the one clairerousseau was doing on How To Keep Creating When The World's On Fire, which I didn't actually manage to make it into, whoops.) But this one! I took NOTES, I had a great time, A+ would windmill slam again.

( Read more... )

Hello my darlings!

On the 14th, I was at Edge-Lit, which I THINK counts as my local con? (I keep going "Ah yes, Nine Worlds, best and most local con!" while Edge-Lit glares behind me, like I am the living embodiment of that one meme.) It was pretty good!

( Cut for yelling about cons! )

All in all, it was a pretty good day! I always feel really... I dunno, energised? When I go to workshops and learn something, especially when it's something practical like marketing. (I am the sort of nerd who'd love to do a creative writing course that had modules on business and marketing, because it would be REALLY USEFUL. I don't know where you'd find such a thing, unless maybe Nottingham Writer's Studio does something like that. ... I just want to be taught useful things, okay.) POSSIBLY I should have booked today off work as a recovery day, but to be honest with you Sundays in the holidays are SUPPOSED to be quiet? Like if I talk to two customers in the entire day I feel justified making an "I need a lie-down" joke levels of quiet. EXCEPT that today has been the infinite drama of "all of the libraries are short-staffed so we need to musical chairs some staff around" so... That was exciting? I'm typing this in one of the tiny libraries on a different campus, where half the library is closed and there are TWO WHOLE STUDENTS in here. ... It's nice! But now I need a lie down.