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ladybusinessSo it's panel idea submission time for WisCon 44 (May 22-25 in Madison, WI), and I may have gone a biiiiit bonkers about it. Having generated, workshopped, and polished ideas and blurbs with my partners and friends and across two different slacks, I've come out the other end with over 30 panel ideas. I thought I'd share them and talk a bit about the process! And also remind you that you can come to WisCon for $55 and yell about topics such as these for four whole days! Our Guests of Honour this year are Yoon Ha Lee and Rebecca Roanhorse!
And even if you can't come, there's still a weeeee bit of time to submit panel ideas! Panel submissions close at midnight CST on January 19. All you have to do is head over to wiscon.net and register an account. This is free and separate from registering for the con. Log in, click the link to submit programming ideas, and go wild!
I myself have certainly gone wild. All my panel blurbs and some talk about the process are behind the cut!
And if you have ideas of your own, feel free to share in the comments!
One of my favourite things about WisCon is how community-centered it is, and coming up with these panel ideas was most certainly a community process. It's been a blast talking to my friends and loved ones about all of these ideas. Many of these ideas sprang from conversations we were having, that we realized should be bigger conversations, with more viewpoints, room to grow, room to breathe. My partner elks came up with a great way to think through panel ideas: think of five questions or issues you want to cover during the panel. This really helped us all decide if an idea was big enough for a panel, or too big for just one panel, and also helped refine and focus the ideas. If the questions we wanted to cover were really scattered and disconnected, that meant we hadn't thought the idea through enough — several germs of ideas ended up being split into multiple panels from this method, and many panels grew in the telling when we realized there were more and more and more related issues to cover.
I also loved the variety of viewpoints and approaches that led to these ideas. I mined the minds of the Sparkle Rocket slack and the OTW slack, especially the gaming channel in the latter. I love that so many different people had different questions to ask, issues to raise, interests to share. In addition to my partners Trav and elks, I'd like to thank the Sparkle Rocket slack at large, especiallyforestofglory, Brianne Reeves, Jenny Hamilton, E, and Anna K, as well as the many members of the OTW slack gaming channel. I hope I see many of you at the con!
Not all of these panels will necessarily make it into the WisCon 44 program — some may be combined, rejected, edited — but it's an honour and a pleasure to have submitted these! They are broken up by the primary programming track I chose for each.
Mx. Professional: Nonbinary in the Workplace
How do you navigate professional spaces when your gender identity isn't exactly mainstream? Let's share strategies for being out without spending all day correcting pronouns and honorifics and explaining your identity to coworkers and contacts. How do we deal with the pressure to be a good representative? The guilt and dysphoria if we're not out? How can cis and binary-gendered allies and coworkers support us? What networking opportunities exist that are inclusive of NB/GQ identities?
Families Outside the Binary
Not every child is a boy or girl, and not every parent is a mother or father. What challenges are unique to families with nonbinary members? What recognition and support do nonbinary children and teens need and find meaningful? How do pregnant people deal with gendered reactions to their bodies? How can mixed cis/nonbinary families treat each other with love and support each other in a binary society? Let's share stories and resources, discuss media representation, and talk across generations.
Videocasting While Female
Booktubers, game streamers, YouTube shows: women casters are everywhere, and so are the expectations, stereotypes, and harassment. Let's talk about what it's like to put our faces onscreen and be judged on our appearance when no non-male body is apolitical. How do we deal with the pressure to look, sound, and act a certain way -- or to not be like 'other girls'? The cost of buying clothes, makeup, and equipment that's not expected of men? How is our work valued compared to our male peers'?
TERFs On Our Turf
J. K. Rowling publicly espouses trans-exclusionary views, and queer spaces have seen huge spikes in acephobia, biphobia, transphobia, and repudiation of the word "queer." Looking beneath the surface, a lot of the rhetoric, dogwhistles, and roots of these trends can be traced to the rise of TERFs: trans-exclusionary radical feminists. How do we keep ourselves and each other safe? How can we learn to recognize TERF dogwhistles, and teach younger generations? How do we heal our communities?
Nonbinary Envisioned: Enbies Onscreen
Janet, Stevonnie, Double Trouble, Syd, Kazi, FL4K, The Adjudicator: We're seeing more nonbinary characters onscreen than ever! So what does nonbinary look and sound like? As TV series, movies, and games depict more enbies in audiovisual media, do we feel the broad range of our gender identities is being represented accurately? Sympathetically? Is being nonbinary being equated with looking androgynous or vaguely masculine? What acting opportunities do these roles create, and who gets to play us?
Backwards in Heels
With the rise of action-oriented roles for women comes an explosion in work for stuntwomen. Stunt, talent, and body doubles have always been part of Hollywood, but characters are increasingly composite creations, with teams of writers, designers, makeup and effects artists, and multiple performers required to put together a single character onscreen. As stuntwomen risk their lives to perform in heels and costumes too skimpy for padding, how can we push for more equal treatment and recognition?
A Decade of Feminist Moments in Speculative Fiction
The explosion of the Marvel Cinematic Universe, Game of Thrones throwing open the doors to mainstream SFF adaptations, the emergence of the Archive of Our Own, the rise of female action heroes, N. K. Jemisin's Hugo hat trick - it's been a big decade in speculative fiction. What are some feminist moments in SFF in the 2010s? What struggles and triumphs defined the decade? How has the field changed, and how does it remain the province of cis white men? How can we improve in the 2020s?
Fighting Back Against Creative Hegemony AKA Sticking It to Disney
As a small number of companies come to own most audiovisual media, the need to fight back against creative hegemony becomes ever more dire. Our media landscape is increasingly dictated by what companies consider "safe," and the potential for art to disturb the comfortable and comfort the disturbed is suppressed. What legal and political action can we take to break Big Media's hold on art? What lessons can we learn from print and game publishing, and how do similar problems manifest there?
Raising Robots Right: What We're Teaching Neural Networks, Search Engines, and Other AIs
We train search engines through which links we click, we normalize certain words when we teach our autocorrects how we talk, we run absurd neural net projects for fun. Raising robots is part of everyday modern life. But what are we teaching them? What social patterns, isms, and misinformation are we spreading? How are we contributing to targeted harassment and the erosion of privacy? How can we be responsible citizens as our global village raises these artificial children?
Reproductive Technology in Spec Fic: Where Are the Artificial Wombs?
Speculative fiction opens the doors to any imaginable setup for continuing the species, so why does so little SFF address issues of reproductive labor and medicine? Why are all humans still carried by other humans in worlds with magic or advanced science? What anxieties surround artificial wombs and other forms of reproductive medicine? What fantastical reproductive assistance can we imagine? How would freeing people with uteruses from the burden of reproduction affect imagined societies?
Cozy Media on a Dying Planet
Cozy fiction centers domesticity, community, and care but often we feel guilt for enjoying cozy media as the world burns. Can we balance self-care with the responsibility of facing darker truths? What can we learn about nonviolent problem-solving, community action, and shared burdens from these stories to use in saving the world? How do we respect experiences of oppression and marginalization in darker fiction? How does cozy fiction help us envision optimistic futures, and then achieve them?
The Fantastical Other and Children's Media
The rise of socially-conscious children's SFF brings many attempts to tackle real world problems and prejudices via fantastical allegory or analogies. While the ostensible reason is to break down illogical, unsensible, and unfair dynamics in a way that kids understand, what harm does this approach do by not directly depicting real world issues? Are these analogies useful and instructive, or damaging and distancing? How does children's media handle visual markers of difference?
Colonialism in Children's Media
While fighting against an evil empire has long been a staple of children's media, recent entries such as Steven Universe, Legend of Korra, Frozen II, and Tamora Pierce's Trickster duology tackle colonialism and its aftermath. What lessons are these stories teaching younger generations? What lessons SHOULD we teach? How does white saviorism affect these narratives? How can we center the colonized experience and explore the reclamation of power and identity in a way that's legible to children?
The End of Supernatural: What the Hell was That?
Supernatural and its fandom has had a huge impact on our media landscape and fandom history and culture. Let's look at the tension between the show's imagined audience and the reality of its largely female fanbase. How did SPN change the fan-creator relationship? How did the rise of Wincest affect shipping norms? How did Destiel change the conversation around queerbaiting? How did SPN affect the visibility of women and minorities in speculative media? Let's look back on The Road So Far!
Let's Do the Time Loop Again
Time loops are a tried and true staple of speculative fiction. From characters experiencing repeating loops in Russian Doll and Groundhog Day to the audience experiencing iterations over and over in Black Mirror: Bandersnatch, what makes time loops so popular? What narrative issues arise, and what storytelling anxieties do they address? Why does this trope endure, and what would we be excited to see happen with it in the future? (Or come back from the past!)
Are Redemption Arcs Salvageable?
Kylo Ren, Loki, Snape: both media creators and fandom continue to indulge in redemption arcs for genocidal white men. Rather than sitting with the discomfort of liking problematic characters, we rush them to forgiveness and skip past the actual work of redemption. How do we return focus to those harmed? Why are the love of a woman or death after one good act used as shortcuts to forgiveness? Who gets to forgive? Is it possible to do redemption arcs responsibly in today's political climate?
Speculative Masculinities
The growing popularity of non-American media, the rise of remakes, and increasing diversity have brought new interpretations of masculinity to the forefront of our media experience. From the non-Western masculinity of The Untamed to Ruby Rhod's successful masculinity in The Fifth Element to the reinterpretation of Kirk, how does the availability of different modes of masculinity in speculative media expand our idea of what's masculine? Does a speculative context affect the limits of masculinity?
Identifying Publicly as a Fan
The AO3's Hugo win echoed all the way out to mainstream news, and more professionals than ever talk publicly about fanwork - their own and others'. Is identifying publicly with fandom still taboo for the average fan? How do we explain our world to the non-fans around us? How has connecting wallet and fan names affected those who dare? How has society's attitude towards fans and fannishness changed? What gendered, racist, and queerphobic assumptions continue to exist?
Purity Culture in Fandom: Fannish Ethics in the Age of Tumblr
Fandom has long been a space to work out issues of identity, consent, & representation, but as fandom grows more socially conscious, some fannish spaces have overcorrected by taking a black-and-white approach to complex issues, often shutting out queer/marginalized voices. How do we redraw the lines between fiction and reality, reproduction and critique, problematic and forbidden? How do we address real concerns about racism drowned out by purity rhetoric? The generational divide? Fandom purges?
SFF Awards in the 2010s: A Retrospective
Awards have been a space for contesting values, meaning, and social change over the last decade. The Puppies, N. K. Jemisin's Hugo hat trick, the Lodestar Award, the game writing Nebula category, the renaming of the Otherwise and Astounding awards - let's look back on the decade's struggles, triumphs, and WTF moments. How have awards addressed issues of diversity? Has the meaning of SFF awards changed as SFF entered the media landscape mainstream? What lessons can we take forward into the 2020s?
50 panels in 75 minutes: Round 2
It's back! Got a vague panel idea but not sure where to go? Need to see if anyone else wants to yell about a thing? Wanna help be part of the panel programming process but not sure where to start? Come on by! We pass around a hat, the audience suggests ideas, and we yell for a minute and a half about each idea. Let's try to get through at least 50!
A Hugo Award for Games
The Hugo Awards recognize the best speculative fiction storytelling, but there is no category for games - and there should be! A proposal to add a games category is currently going through the Hugo Study Committee, and is expected to be on the agenda at the 2020 Worldcon Business Meeting. What do we want, need, and expect from a game award? Should CYOA novels be included? Should board games? What kinds of games are Hugo-worthy? Come be a part of making this category happen!
Relationship Mechanics in Games
More and more games across multiple genres are delving into relationship mechanics, with characters reacting to the player based on previous choices. What makes games uniquely suited to storytelling about romantic, platonic, and antagonistic relationships? How do games give us space to explore desire and identity through enacting interactions? What prejudices around consent and queerphobia are we encoding into relationship mechanics? How do we avoid "if I give the right gifts they will date me"?
Worlds that Breathe: Interactive Worldbuilding
Games like Horizon Zero Dawn, Dark Souls, Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild, and Dragon Age immerse us in rich, interactive worlds. What makes worldbuilding in games unique and challenging when players can interact, explore, and miss things? How do game creators balance storytelling with the world itself needing to be a legible interface? How are players influenced to explore or ignore? How do you convey scale with limited resources? How is the advent of VR changing game worldbuilding?
Games And Their Onscreen Siblings: Adaptations, Tie-Ins, and Franchises
Detective Pikachu, he Witcher, Marvel's Spider-Man, LEGO Harry Potter, E.T. - the maturing medium of games is in deep conversation with its older onscreen siblings. What makes for a successful translation from one medium to another? How does the removal of choice/feedback and the cementing of a character via casting affect adaptations of games? How can tie-in games avoid being retreads? How have adaptations changed over time? What makes these sibling screen media a good match, or a bad one?
To Play a Story: The Growth of Visual Novels and Storytelling Elements in Video Games
There's been an explosion in visual novels in recent years. What makes this storytelling medium so unique? What makes it such a rich site for exploring relationship dynamics, and what makes for good relationship mechanics? What are some good VNs without romance? What led to the preponderance of queer creators and characters? How do VN fans deal with accusations of not being real games, and the influx of meme-soaked VN by those outside the community? What differentiates English and Japanese VNs?
Pixels and Perfection: Hyperrealism VS Stylization in Games
Most AAA developers and console makers still focus on increasing fidelity in a quest for the ultimate in realism, even as indie studios churn out beautiful stylized games by the dozens. What are the strengths and weaknesses of these approaches, and what makes most effective use of a complex medium? What makes for good storytelling? What role does availability of resources and the ability to develop custom engines play? What drives stylization when many stylized games are still 3D under the hood?
A Decade of Leveling Up: Video Games in the 2010s
The 2010s saw the rise of Steam, Twitch, and Youtube; the indie explosion and the swell of casual gamers; GamerGate toxicity and millions of dollars raised in charity marathons; six major console releases and the birth of VR. And so, so, SO many great games! Let's look back on a decade in the fastest-moving medium on Earth. How have female gamers and gamers of color fared? What sociopolitical strides have matched the pace of the technology? How has the industry changed? And, of course, recs!
Backward Glances In A Futuristic Medium: Nostalgia and Video Games
There's no medium where the retro and nostalgic thrives quite as much as games. Pixel art, remakes, sidescrollers: if it looks, feels, or is old, many gamers love it. Given the short history of video games and their rapid technological advancement, what is it about the medium that inspires looking back instead of to the future? What creative role do remakes and rereleases play? How do indie developers capitalize on this? AAA developers? What are some of our favorites of old or recent retro hits?
Breaking The Steam Stranglehold: Distributing and Supporting Indie Games
The Steam algorithm is merciless - so what are our options? Opaque approvals, biased recommendation systems, and poor review and forum moderation combine to disadvantage indie developers. What other distribution avenues are available to game creators? How can gamers support indie developers more directly? How can we all spread the word when we can't spread the money? Let's talk strategies, sympathy, and off-Steam successes.
Fostering Positive Co-Op in Games
With Death Stranding's much-touted positive co-op features being a disappointment, let's look at what makes a successful positive co-op game. What mechanics foster positive interactions and encourage players to help each other? What technical and social challenges do game creators encounter in making these games and building positive communities? How does marketing and word of mouth affect who plays the game and how? How can video games learn from co-op board/card games and vice versa?
Avatars, Aspirations, Attraction, and Identity: Playing As Who We Want to Look LIKE or Look AT
Games are giving us more options than ever in what kind of characters we can play onscreen. How does our choice of player character relate to our identities, aspirations, and desires? Do we play as someone who looks like us? As the gender presentation we wish we had? As the type of person we desire? Let's talk about how games can give us a space to explore and enact different types of embodiment and attraction, what options we want to see more of, and what we wish developers would stop doing.
And even if you can't come, there's still a weeeee bit of time to submit panel ideas! Panel submissions close at midnight CST on January 19. All you have to do is head over to wiscon.net and register an account. This is free and separate from registering for the con. Log in, click the link to submit programming ideas, and go wild!
I myself have certainly gone wild. All my panel blurbs and some talk about the process are behind the cut!
And if you have ideas of your own, feel free to share in the comments!
One of my favourite things about WisCon is how community-centered it is, and coming up with these panel ideas was most certainly a community process. It's been a blast talking to my friends and loved ones about all of these ideas. Many of these ideas sprang from conversations we were having, that we realized should be bigger conversations, with more viewpoints, room to grow, room to breathe. My partner elks came up with a great way to think through panel ideas: think of five questions or issues you want to cover during the panel. This really helped us all decide if an idea was big enough for a panel, or too big for just one panel, and also helped refine and focus the ideas. If the questions we wanted to cover were really scattered and disconnected, that meant we hadn't thought the idea through enough — several germs of ideas ended up being split into multiple panels from this method, and many panels grew in the telling when we realized there were more and more and more related issues to cover.
I also loved the variety of viewpoints and approaches that led to these ideas. I mined the minds of the Sparkle Rocket slack and the OTW slack, especially the gaming channel in the latter. I love that so many different people had different questions to ask, issues to raise, interests to share. In addition to my partners Trav and elks, I'd like to thank the Sparkle Rocket slack at large, especially
forestofglory, Brianne Reeves, Jenny Hamilton, E, and Anna K, as well as the many members of the OTW slack gaming channel. I hope I see many of you at the con!Not all of these panels will necessarily make it into the WisCon 44 program — some may be combined, rejected, edited — but it's an honour and a pleasure to have submitted these! They are broken up by the primary programming track I chose for each.
Feminism and Other Social Change Movements
Mx. Professional: Nonbinary in the Workplace
How do you navigate professional spaces when your gender identity isn't exactly mainstream? Let's share strategies for being out without spending all day correcting pronouns and honorifics and explaining your identity to coworkers and contacts. How do we deal with the pressure to be a good representative? The guilt and dysphoria if we're not out? How can cis and binary-gendered allies and coworkers support us? What networking opportunities exist that are inclusive of NB/GQ identities?
Families Outside the Binary
Not every child is a boy or girl, and not every parent is a mother or father. What challenges are unique to families with nonbinary members? What recognition and support do nonbinary children and teens need and find meaningful? How do pregnant people deal with gendered reactions to their bodies? How can mixed cis/nonbinary families treat each other with love and support each other in a binary society? Let's share stories and resources, discuss media representation, and talk across generations.
Videocasting While Female
Booktubers, game streamers, YouTube shows: women casters are everywhere, and so are the expectations, stereotypes, and harassment. Let's talk about what it's like to put our faces onscreen and be judged on our appearance when no non-male body is apolitical. How do we deal with the pressure to look, sound, and act a certain way -- or to not be like 'other girls'? The cost of buying clothes, makeup, and equipment that's not expected of men? How is our work valued compared to our male peers'?
TERFs On Our Turf
J. K. Rowling publicly espouses trans-exclusionary views, and queer spaces have seen huge spikes in acephobia, biphobia, transphobia, and repudiation of the word "queer." Looking beneath the surface, a lot of the rhetoric, dogwhistles, and roots of these trends can be traced to the rise of TERFs: trans-exclusionary radical feminists. How do we keep ourselves and each other safe? How can we learn to recognize TERF dogwhistles, and teach younger generations? How do we heal our communities?
Nonbinary Envisioned: Enbies Onscreen
Janet, Stevonnie, Double Trouble, Syd, Kazi, FL4K, The Adjudicator: We're seeing more nonbinary characters onscreen than ever! So what does nonbinary look and sound like? As TV series, movies, and games depict more enbies in audiovisual media, do we feel the broad range of our gender identities is being represented accurately? Sympathetically? Is being nonbinary being equated with looking androgynous or vaguely masculine? What acting opportunities do these roles create, and who gets to play us?
Backwards in Heels
With the rise of action-oriented roles for women comes an explosion in work for stuntwomen. Stunt, talent, and body doubles have always been part of Hollywood, but characters are increasingly composite creations, with teams of writers, designers, makeup and effects artists, and multiple performers required to put together a single character onscreen. As stuntwomen risk their lives to perform in heels and costumes too skimpy for padding, how can we push for more equal treatment and recognition?
A Decade of Feminist Moments in Speculative Fiction
The explosion of the Marvel Cinematic Universe, Game of Thrones throwing open the doors to mainstream SFF adaptations, the emergence of the Archive of Our Own, the rise of female action heroes, N. K. Jemisin's Hugo hat trick - it's been a big decade in speculative fiction. What are some feminist moments in SFF in the 2010s? What struggles and triumphs defined the decade? How has the field changed, and how does it remain the province of cis white men? How can we improve in the 2020s?
Power, Privilege, and Oppression
Fighting Back Against Creative Hegemony AKA Sticking It to Disney
As a small number of companies come to own most audiovisual media, the need to fight back against creative hegemony becomes ever more dire. Our media landscape is increasingly dictated by what companies consider "safe," and the potential for art to disturb the comfortable and comfort the disturbed is suppressed. What legal and political action can we take to break Big Media's hold on art? What lessons can we learn from print and game publishing, and how do similar problems manifest there?
Science and Technology
Raising Robots Right: What We're Teaching Neural Networks, Search Engines, and Other AIs
We train search engines through which links we click, we normalize certain words when we teach our autocorrects how we talk, we run absurd neural net projects for fun. Raising robots is part of everyday modern life. But what are we teaching them? What social patterns, isms, and misinformation are we spreading? How are we contributing to targeted harassment and the erosion of privacy? How can we be responsible citizens as our global village raises these artificial children?
Reproductive Technology in Spec Fic: Where Are the Artificial Wombs?
Speculative fiction opens the doors to any imaginable setup for continuing the species, so why does so little SFF address issues of reproductive labor and medicine? Why are all humans still carried by other humans in worlds with magic or advanced science? What anxieties surround artificial wombs and other forms of reproductive medicine? What fantastical reproductive assistance can we imagine? How would freeing people with uteruses from the burden of reproduction affect imagined societies?
Reading, Viewing, and Critiquing Science Fiction
Cozy Media on a Dying Planet
Cozy fiction centers domesticity, community, and care but often we feel guilt for enjoying cozy media as the world burns. Can we balance self-care with the responsibility of facing darker truths? What can we learn about nonviolent problem-solving, community action, and shared burdens from these stories to use in saving the world? How do we respect experiences of oppression and marginalization in darker fiction? How does cozy fiction help us envision optimistic futures, and then achieve them?
The Fantastical Other and Children's Media
The rise of socially-conscious children's SFF brings many attempts to tackle real world problems and prejudices via fantastical allegory or analogies. While the ostensible reason is to break down illogical, unsensible, and unfair dynamics in a way that kids understand, what harm does this approach do by not directly depicting real world issues? Are these analogies useful and instructive, or damaging and distancing? How does children's media handle visual markers of difference?
Colonialism in Children's Media
While fighting against an evil empire has long been a staple of children's media, recent entries such as Steven Universe, Legend of Korra, Frozen II, and Tamora Pierce's Trickster duology tackle colonialism and its aftermath. What lessons are these stories teaching younger generations? What lessons SHOULD we teach? How does white saviorism affect these narratives? How can we center the colonized experience and explore the reclamation of power and identity in a way that's legible to children?
The End of Supernatural: What the Hell was That?
Supernatural and its fandom has had a huge impact on our media landscape and fandom history and culture. Let's look at the tension between the show's imagined audience and the reality of its largely female fanbase. How did SPN change the fan-creator relationship? How did the rise of Wincest affect shipping norms? How did Destiel change the conversation around queerbaiting? How did SPN affect the visibility of women and minorities in speculative media? Let's look back on The Road So Far!
Let's Do the Time Loop Again
Time loops are a tried and true staple of speculative fiction. From characters experiencing repeating loops in Russian Doll and Groundhog Day to the audience experiencing iterations over and over in Black Mirror: Bandersnatch, what makes time loops so popular? What narrative issues arise, and what storytelling anxieties do they address? Why does this trope endure, and what would we be excited to see happen with it in the future? (Or come back from the past!)
Are Redemption Arcs Salvageable?
Kylo Ren, Loki, Snape: both media creators and fandom continue to indulge in redemption arcs for genocidal white men. Rather than sitting with the discomfort of liking problematic characters, we rush them to forgiveness and skip past the actual work of redemption. How do we return focus to those harmed? Why are the love of a woman or death after one good act used as shortcuts to forgiveness? Who gets to forgive? Is it possible to do redemption arcs responsibly in today's political climate?
Speculative Masculinities
The growing popularity of non-American media, the rise of remakes, and increasing diversity have brought new interpretations of masculinity to the forefront of our media experience. From the non-Western masculinity of The Untamed to Ruby Rhod's successful masculinity in The Fifth Element to the reinterpretation of Kirk, how does the availability of different modes of masculinity in speculative media expand our idea of what's masculine? Does a speculative context affect the limits of masculinity?
Fandom as a Way of Life
Identifying Publicly as a Fan
The AO3's Hugo win echoed all the way out to mainstream news, and more professionals than ever talk publicly about fanwork - their own and others'. Is identifying publicly with fandom still taboo for the average fan? How do we explain our world to the non-fans around us? How has connecting wallet and fan names affected those who dare? How has society's attitude towards fans and fannishness changed? What gendered, racist, and queerphobic assumptions continue to exist?
Purity Culture in Fandom: Fannish Ethics in the Age of Tumblr
Fandom has long been a space to work out issues of identity, consent, & representation, but as fandom grows more socially conscious, some fannish spaces have overcorrected by taking a black-and-white approach to complex issues, often shutting out queer/marginalized voices. How do we redraw the lines between fiction and reality, reproduction and critique, problematic and forbidden? How do we address real concerns about racism drowned out by purity rhetoric? The generational divide? Fandom purges?
SFF Awards in the 2010s: A Retrospective
Awards have been a space for contesting values, meaning, and social change over the last decade. The Puppies, N. K. Jemisin's Hugo hat trick, the Lodestar Award, the game writing Nebula category, the renaming of the Otherwise and Astounding awards - let's look back on the decade's struggles, triumphs, and WTF moments. How have awards addressed issues of diversity? Has the meaning of SFF awards changed as SFF entered the media landscape mainstream? What lessons can we take forward into the 2020s?
50 panels in 75 minutes: Round 2
It's back! Got a vague panel idea but not sure where to go? Need to see if anyone else wants to yell about a thing? Wanna help be part of the panel programming process but not sure where to start? Come on by! We pass around a hat, the audience suggests ideas, and we yell for a minute and a half about each idea. Let's try to get through at least 50!
Interactive Storytelling & Media
A Hugo Award for Games
The Hugo Awards recognize the best speculative fiction storytelling, but there is no category for games - and there should be! A proposal to add a games category is currently going through the Hugo Study Committee, and is expected to be on the agenda at the 2020 Worldcon Business Meeting. What do we want, need, and expect from a game award? Should CYOA novels be included? Should board games? What kinds of games are Hugo-worthy? Come be a part of making this category happen!
Relationship Mechanics in Games
More and more games across multiple genres are delving into relationship mechanics, with characters reacting to the player based on previous choices. What makes games uniquely suited to storytelling about romantic, platonic, and antagonistic relationships? How do games give us space to explore desire and identity through enacting interactions? What prejudices around consent and queerphobia are we encoding into relationship mechanics? How do we avoid "if I give the right gifts they will date me"?
Worlds that Breathe: Interactive Worldbuilding
Games like Horizon Zero Dawn, Dark Souls, Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild, and Dragon Age immerse us in rich, interactive worlds. What makes worldbuilding in games unique and challenging when players can interact, explore, and miss things? How do game creators balance storytelling with the world itself needing to be a legible interface? How are players influenced to explore or ignore? How do you convey scale with limited resources? How is the advent of VR changing game worldbuilding?
Games And Their Onscreen Siblings: Adaptations, Tie-Ins, and Franchises
Detective Pikachu, he Witcher, Marvel's Spider-Man, LEGO Harry Potter, E.T. - the maturing medium of games is in deep conversation with its older onscreen siblings. What makes for a successful translation from one medium to another? How does the removal of choice/feedback and the cementing of a character via casting affect adaptations of games? How can tie-in games avoid being retreads? How have adaptations changed over time? What makes these sibling screen media a good match, or a bad one?
To Play a Story: The Growth of Visual Novels and Storytelling Elements in Video Games
There's been an explosion in visual novels in recent years. What makes this storytelling medium so unique? What makes it such a rich site for exploring relationship dynamics, and what makes for good relationship mechanics? What are some good VNs without romance? What led to the preponderance of queer creators and characters? How do VN fans deal with accusations of not being real games, and the influx of meme-soaked VN by those outside the community? What differentiates English and Japanese VNs?
Pixels and Perfection: Hyperrealism VS Stylization in Games
Most AAA developers and console makers still focus on increasing fidelity in a quest for the ultimate in realism, even as indie studios churn out beautiful stylized games by the dozens. What are the strengths and weaknesses of these approaches, and what makes most effective use of a complex medium? What makes for good storytelling? What role does availability of resources and the ability to develop custom engines play? What drives stylization when many stylized games are still 3D under the hood?
A Decade of Leveling Up: Video Games in the 2010s
The 2010s saw the rise of Steam, Twitch, and Youtube; the indie explosion and the swell of casual gamers; GamerGate toxicity and millions of dollars raised in charity marathons; six major console releases and the birth of VR. And so, so, SO many great games! Let's look back on a decade in the fastest-moving medium on Earth. How have female gamers and gamers of color fared? What sociopolitical strides have matched the pace of the technology? How has the industry changed? And, of course, recs!
Backward Glances In A Futuristic Medium: Nostalgia and Video Games
There's no medium where the retro and nostalgic thrives quite as much as games. Pixel art, remakes, sidescrollers: if it looks, feels, or is old, many gamers love it. Given the short history of video games and their rapid technological advancement, what is it about the medium that inspires looking back instead of to the future? What creative role do remakes and rereleases play? How do indie developers capitalize on this? AAA developers? What are some of our favorites of old or recent retro hits?
Breaking The Steam Stranglehold: Distributing and Supporting Indie Games
The Steam algorithm is merciless - so what are our options? Opaque approvals, biased recommendation systems, and poor review and forum moderation combine to disadvantage indie developers. What other distribution avenues are available to game creators? How can gamers support indie developers more directly? How can we all spread the word when we can't spread the money? Let's talk strategies, sympathy, and off-Steam successes.
Fostering Positive Co-Op in Games
With Death Stranding's much-touted positive co-op features being a disappointment, let's look at what makes a successful positive co-op game. What mechanics foster positive interactions and encourage players to help each other? What technical and social challenges do game creators encounter in making these games and building positive communities? How does marketing and word of mouth affect who plays the game and how? How can video games learn from co-op board/card games and vice versa?
Avatars, Aspirations, Attraction, and Identity: Playing As Who We Want to Look LIKE or Look AT
Games are giving us more options than ever in what kind of characters we can play onscreen. How does our choice of player character relate to our identities, aspirations, and desires? Do we play as someone who looks like us? As the gender presentation we wish we had? As the type of person we desire? Let's talk about how games can give us a space to explore and enact different types of embodiment and attraction, what options we want to see more of, and what we wish developers would stop doing.
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Date: 2020-01-18 05:47 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2020-01-18 05:49 pm (UTC)