I got back from Wiscon yesterday, and taking an extra day off today is perhaps the best life decision I ever made. I slept until 1pm (I KNOW) and now I’ve decided to try to gather my thoughts about the con while I have time. These are long and not particularly organized, but here goes.

Firstly, it was just as fun as you’d expect to meet Cool People From the Internet in person, and it was particularly awesome to meet runawaynun, futuransky, were_duck, prozacpark, and aphrodite_mine, plus all the new people I didn’t know before. (*waves to new people*)

This was my first Wiscon, and so there were obviously a ton of parts of it that I didn’t see, because there just isn’t time for it all. It's really something as a place and history and concept, and as an aspiration. There are several threads of discussions at Wiscon—politics panels, an academic track, panels on specific issues in SFF literature, readings, and fannish panels about fandom and transformative works. I went mainly with the intention of talking about vidding with the few people who would let me talk about it with them, meeting cool people I knew online, and participating in the fannish discussions, knowing that those things were a small part of the con. Some of those fannish things didn't quite align with my expectations in some ways, so some of this post is about that.

Vidding
( Vid party and vidding panel )


Panels in General
( Mostly about a panel I really enjoyed )


Fannish panels and fandom
( Mostly a lot of rambling about fandom )


Whew. So Wiscon happened. I should have broken that into multiple posts, but if I didn't type it all out now, it would have disappeared from my brain. Bless you if you read that, and I'd love to hear thoughts if you have any. Now I think I'm going back to sleep.

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LOOK, look what emmiere made me for my Parables vid! GRAPHICS! (emmiere: decorating my journal with gorgeousness as a habit. See also Sarah and Olivia and the kitten poster of awesome <3). I suck and jumped the gun on her and posted the vid while I was still at the con, thus I am telling you now that I just added title graphics to the post so you can all admire how talented she is. She gave me two and I couldn't pick, so check out the gorgeousness on both Dreamwidth and Livejournal. <333333.

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Parable
A constructed fanvid for Parable of the Sower and Parable of the Talents by Octavia Butler. The prescience of Octavia Butler and the perseverance of Lauren Olamina. Title graphic by the incomparable emmiere.
Music: “The Day the World Went Away,” Ark Sano piano cover of Nine Inch Nails
Video: Multi-source. See notes below for the full list of video sources used to construct the vid.

In July 2012, Lauren Olamina will turn three.

Stream at Blip | Stream on Youtube | Download (at Mediafire, ~56mb, .avi)

( Embed, notes and source list under the cut )

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Wiscon is next weekend and I'm looking forward to taking a break from work, not worrying about all the things I have to do to prepare to quit my job, move and start a new job, and just thinking about geeky feminism things for three days. \o/

I'm poring over the Wiscon schedule and making lists where there are always at least two things I want to attend in each time slot. The only things that set in stone are the vidding things, because talking about vidding in a feminist setting, whee! I think I had a dream about that once. :) But pregnancy in SF! Religious agendas in SF! What makes a great transformative work! Reproductive justice in SF! Fixing canons! ATLA meta! Negotiating layers of fannishness! And am I going to get up at 8:30 for a panel on heteronormativity in YA SFF? I...think I am. (I have a lot of frustration with this, and just hearing other people also be frustrated with it sounds kind of refreshing. And at least I'll be familiar with those canons, given my recent YA SF kick!) For someone who has never been too keen on cons before, I'm kind of surprised at how excited I am, especially since I expect to frequently have no idea what books/movies/games/what-have-you people are talking about. But I really want to feel some spark of connection to some part of fandom again, so *crosses fingers*

I am also making a list of things to bring with me, which so far includes: 1) viiiiids; 2) Irina Derevko, *hint hint to prozacpark, I mean, to nobody in particular*; and 3) shampoo, in that order.

I am also trying to remember the veterans' advice not to overplan and try to go to ALL THE PANELS but to allow plenty of hanging out time too. This is where you all come in! I know a few of you that are going, and want to make sure that we meet up. I'm new to this whole con thing so I'm not sure how it all works, but it seems like a good idea to give you my phone number and/or take yours if you're comfortable with that so we can find out where everybody is. Comment, PM me on DW or LJ or email me at chaila43[at]gmail[dot]com or send me a carrier pigeon if you want my number, and I'll send it to you. (runawaynun, I have yours!)

P.S. prozacpark I hope you were totally serious about that informal panel type thing about media portrayals of women with power! :D?

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rarewomen roused me from my accidental fic-reading hiatus (a sad but inevitable by-product of having only tiny fandoms, and yet not doing a very good job contributing to those fandoms myself). Thus, now I bring you recs!

First, there are a ton of stories in a ton of fandoms I'm not familiar with or just not reading in, so you should definitely peruse the masterlist yourself

And now a by no means comphrensive list of stories I particularly enjoyed:

Dark Paradise by listedheart [Luther; Alice] - A fantastic, evocative character study of Alice, and the way she sees John at the very beginning of the series. *ships*

a little late for a change of plan by aphrodite_mine [Luther; Jenny] - A stunning Jenny POV fic, disturbed and fragmented, and a complex picture of the awkwardly shaped, fragile family-shaped entity she might make with John and Alice.

When the Goods Get Together by killer_quean [Northanger Abbey; Isabella Thorpe & ???] - If you love Austen (as I do) but dislike her treatment of so-called "mercenary women" despite the fact that wealthy marriage was the only viable option for comfort for women in that class at the time (as I do), you should read this fic (as I did).

Stories We Tell Ourselves by Beatrice_Otter [TSCC; Sarah & Weaver] - I wasn't sure about this one at first because I have such a specific-to-me Sarah voice in my head, but on second read this was more than worth relaxing into as a great Weaver fic (does that make sense?). Weaver's voice and way of thinking is spot-on, as is the set-up of these two as poles of whatever comes next.

And two about the various ladies of The West Wing, post-series, getting things done together: Ladies Who Lunch by damelola [Ainsley & Donna] and Elevator Ride by bluflamingo [Kate, Liz Bartlet & Amy].

(I CANNOT GET THE CODING RIGHT, I WILL KILL EVERYONE IN THE WORLD. Ugh Dreamwidth, why are you now doing this to me too???)

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Renamed my LJ to chaila to match my DW, because it's my vidding handle and the name I actually use, because it was purged and thus available and because I like it better. In case you notice(d)! Still me!

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( My Leslie Knope feelings, let me show you them )

***

NURSE JACKIE HAS BEEN MAKING ME SO HAPPY THAT I LITERALLY DON'T HAVE WORDS. Just thought I should get that out there. Ugh someday I will have words. But *flappy hands* everything I love!!!!!!11!!1!1!! All the female characters having things to do and talking to each other and just being complex and also amazing and also funny. <3 And Zoey. And O'Hara. And Jackie. And Akalitus. <333

***

Mostly unrelatedly (except for my TV girlfriend, Eleanor O'Hara), smallbatchicons --a comm, obvs, for posting small sets of icons, which is a pretty awesome concept--has been running a request fest for 3 Weeks for DW. As usual, I have no shame when it comes to requesting icons, for I love icons and have no ability to make them. I posted several requests, and then some people made gorgeous icon sets! All completely shareable.

Luther, John/Alice in 2x02 in that scene that makes my heart flutter arobynsung
TSCC, Sarah/Guns OTP by maharet83
Luther, Jenny Jones' mommy issues by maharet83
Nurse Jackie, Eleanor O'Hara (& friends!) by maharet83

There are other fills for other requests, including Avatar: TLA ladies and Astrid Farnsworth, so go forth and upload the icons! And I believe requests are still open for a few hours (<-- there are links there for screencap galleries at that post and also disparue.org is a fantastic resource for many caps of many shows, including Luther, Downton Abbey and TSCC, plus tons of others I'm forgetting because I haven't used them). Make a request with caps, receive icons. It's magic!
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1) female_fest, a fest celebrating all kinds of relationships between women, is open for prompts until mid-June, with claiming and writing after that.

2) Another female character trope fest is open for prompting at such_heights', with a fills post opening later this week (no claiming required!) The ladies of Nurse Jackie seem particularly amenable to fannish tropes, I think. Anyone? :D? Also if anyone wants to write me Sarah Connor and Olivia Dunham huddling for warmth, I'll be your best friend! 

Maybe if I put these here, I'll prompt myself to sign up for something or write something! Or maybe I'll just to continue to imagine that awesome Fringe AU where Altlivia and Olivia run off with baby Henry and save the world(s). It's so much easier to just keep it in my head. :)

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( Spoilers for Fringe 4x20 )

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VIDDING MAKES ME WANT TO THROW THINGS AT THE WALL AND I CAN'T REMEMBER WHY I DO IT. Ahem.

Basically, I'm vidding a book (i.e. using other video sources to cast my characters and situations to vid the story and characters of the book) and I want to include a few shots that replicate the pages from the book throughout the vid. Everything I do just looks like...black type on a white background, and super unsophisticated and I hate it. (And I don't just want to use white or black text with a transparent or black background, because it's important to the story of my vid that these quotes come from a BOOK, like it's a book that the character in the vid wrote). Does anyone have any suggestions for small tweaks to make, textures, coloring, etc. that I might be able to use to make a graphic of a few lines text (which need to be big enough to be read) look more like it comes from a book rather than my word processor?  Does this even make sense? Possibly this stupid vid has addled my brain and there's nothing I can change and I'm just cantankerous about my vid. But I'm hoping that someone with a little graphics experience might have a suggestion or two? I just have no graphics skill at all, like I can't even imagine ways to mess with my graphics program to make it look even subtly less awful. 

I have GIMP and GIMPshop, but if it's a thing that can be explained in Photoshop, I would at least feel somewhat confident I could replicate it in my program. Or at least Google until someone explained it to me. 

Vidding argh.

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