forestofglory

I'm heading to WisCon latter this week!

I'll be on two online panels on Friday:

The Social life of Recs
Online Zoom Room 1 • Fandom as a Way of Life • Fri 1:00 PM–2:15 PM
Recs (short for recommendations) play an important social role. Recs can be a way to share joy and build community. Talking about the things you love can help connect with other people who have similar taste. However recs can sometimes be a problem as well. What happens when you don't like the thing your friend recced? Let's talk about the social role of recs.

Imaginary Book Club
Online Zoom Room 2 • Fandom as a Way of Life • Fri 7:30 PM–8:45 PM
Five panelists discuss books they've read in the last year—even though those books (technically) do not exist—and improvise commentary with each other. This year's subjects may include: a newly discovered eighteenth-century robot romance, the Complete Animorphs as annotated by Thomas Pynchon, and an office-worker horror anthology called "Break Room".

And I'm also moding one the new Roundtables on Monday.

Epistolary Fiction
Conference 4 • Reading, Viewing, and Critiquing Science Fiction • Mon 10:00 AM–11:15 AM
Roundtable discussion. Epistolary Fiction, or stories that consist of letters and other artifacts, have a long history. In an age where distance seems smaller every day, why does epistolary fiction still have an appeal, whether it's emails, text messages, social media, or book reviews? Is there something unique about the format that allows for a different type of storytelling? Are we just powerless to resist the implicit intimacy reading others' correspondence implies? Come join a discussion of the appeal, and challenges, of reading and writing epistolary fiction.

If you are going to be there and want to meet up let me know!

Last weekend I attended WisCONline, the online version of Wiscon! It was a lot fun, though still really missed getting to see people in person! (Hi new people who were there!)

A few days before the con I mentioned that I was sad that I couldn’t read on my flight to a virtual con. So R suggested that I take a pretend flight to the con. I ended up doing this -- though not sitting in the back seat of the car. Instead I upgrade myself to the sofa. I sat and read for two hours! R even brought me an “in flight” snack. It was a lovely way to start the con.

After my flight I logged on to the con Discord for the first time. It was my first time using Discord and I found it overwhelming -- though it got easier to use with practice and learning how to mute channels. I ended up spending a lot of time chatting in the Discord. I hung out a lot on the xianxia channel where we talked about various Chinese media -- I think we convinced people to try both Guardian and Nirvana in Fire and one person started watching The Untamed! I have a list of new stuff to check out too!

I attend several zoom meetups over the course of the weekend. Two were planned before hand to replicate meets with online friends we would have had if we could have been there in person. So we had a group meal -- the theme was all day breakfast though I think in the end I was the only person who ate breakfast food. And we also had BarCon. It was lovely to see everyone’s faces! The xianxia channel also had a meet up which was super fun!

This year’s wiscon panels were much shorter than normal 45 minutes instead of 75. I attended a few but found it challenging to keep up with both a video stream of the panelist and the discord chat happening at the same time. I was also on a panel myself -- focused on cities. It was a lot of fun, but harder to interact with people afterwards even when they made good comments in the chat.

The online format was much more of a challenge for me to manage in terms of my auditory processing disorder. Some of that was just me not having as much experience pacing myself in that environment. Doing con stuff and also home stuff is a lot. I ended up really overdoing things on Saturday and have to rest and miss events on Sunday. Hopefully if I do another online con I will have a better sense of what I can and can’t do.

Overall I really enjoyed the con! I got to chat with a lot of interesting people. I found out about new things that I want to read and watch! I learned how to use discord. (I’m Forestofglory#4726 there if anyone wants to say hi) I was sad not to be able to hug my friends in person, but I’m really glad we were able to have an online event. Thanks so much to everyone who made it happen!