#nineworlds

This write up is bought to you by a pack of Nerds, so who the hell knows how coherent it will be by the end.

(Actual footage of me)

From Saturday!

Sunday:

Our Last Best Hope for Science Fiction: 25 Years of Babylon 5

A look at a ground breaking sci-fi series, celebrating a show we love and how it grew from a something set on a space station to something truly special.

(Two Centauri, a starfleet officer, and a Morden(?) walk in to a panel...)

This is the panel I missed the talk on Golems for, and much as I wanted to see the Golems, this was 100% worth the trade, because I’ve never met that many people who are in to B5 before, and it was a really funny and thought provoking panel with some beautiful moments in it, including the moments of silence when we remembered those from the Babylon 5 family who have gone beyond the rim.

There was also discussion of favourite moments from Babylon 5. Mine has to be this, from the Centauri’s final assault on the Narn Homeworld. Peter Jurasik’s acting is superb here, but I love that the writers and director made a place in that episode to show the flipping of Mollari when he realises what he’s done - how out of control and repelled he feels by what should be a moment of triumph. And the moment he starts to work his way back towards some sort of redemption.

I think my favourite quote of the whole thing was by the person cosplaying as Londo Mollari:

"Behold minbari Jesus - his name is Jeff" 

(This psycop lurked for the entire panel. It’s as perfectly creepy and wonderful as it sounds. When I mentioned that on twitter, it devolved in to a Babylon 5 pun war...)

When I came out of the B5 panel, the one person I’d seen with a brain slug had become a collective. And they continued to grow in number throughout Sunday. Props to the person who spent an entire year making brain slugs to give away to strangers at Nine Worlds.

(The frightening brain slug collective. They continued to multiply throughout the day. Possibly the creepiest cosplay of the weekend, just because they continued to multiply.)

History’s Hidden Heroes III

Following two years of back-to-back success, the ‘History's Hidden Heroes’ session returns to its original format of ten to fifteen minute mini-talks by individual presenters discussing their favourite figures lost - or pushed aside - from mainstream history. Introduction by EK McAlpine, with talks from Tara, Avery, and Reiley.

This session was run by EK, and the speakers were Avery Delany, Tara Brown, and Reiley Daniels who all spoke about people in history who were part of the LGBTQ community, including some who were trans (though not remembered that way), some who were gender non-conforming, some who were openly queer at a time when that was (more) dangerous than now.

Avery spoke about trans masculine people in history, including a pioneering doctor, James Barry (note - while that Wiki article generally avoids using any pronouns at all, there is a source from the time quoted that misgenders Barry, so be careful if that would cause you any distress).

My favourite quote from Avery was “Do some queer history“, but I also really appreciated something I didn’t get the exact words of, but amounted to the idea that someone wouldn’t live as a gender different to the one they were assigned at birth for over 50 years if they did not actually identify as that gender. I really wish I’d got the actual words, because that quote stuck with me as much as anything.

Tara Brown spoke about three women of colour who were pioneers in blues and jazz - and sexuality, Ma Rainey, Bessie Smith, and Gladys Bentley.

One of the most interesting, and awful, takeaways from this talk was the brief discussion about how there is some difference in the historical record as to the sexuality women presented, and that this is due to McCarthyism which basically forced at least Gladys Bentley to present herself as no longer a lesbian. It made me so cross to think of a person as comfortable in their sexuality as Bentley having to forcibly change themselves because of the massive risks that being out and proud served in the backwards looking 1950s America.

Reiley spoke about a quack physician called Charles Hamilton (misgendered practically everywhere on the internet), and the importance of checking multiple sources and subjecting them to due scrutiny.

If anyone enjoyed this panel is interested in other hidden heroes from sources that aim at diversity in who and what they talk about (and use content notices), I highly recommend @missedinhistory, Sawbones, and @rejectedprincesses.

The Future of Nine Worlds

It's time for a chat about Nine Worlds and where it's going. If you have strong thoughts about what you'd like to see the event become, and would like to get involved in making things happen, this is your in-person opportunity to talk about the options and understand how we got where we are.

Went to this, and I honestly don’t have a lot to say about it - not a lot a could say about it because I’m very much not the right person to speak about what happened in the majority of the session.

I will say that the announcement that Nine Worlds was re-constituting after this year’s con felt like a blow to the gut.

(This was an incredibly powerful moment, and to know that even though the current director is stepping back a future nineworlds is possible meant so very much.)

(Main point by what may turn out to be the future team was that Nine Worlds is too precious to lose)

CN for discussion of police at con, and a failure act appropriately to the stated concerns of a con-goer (and more concerned people who did not speak about it at the Future of Nine Worlds panel). When this section is over there will be a delightful gif of Wonder Woman deflecting bullets so scroll below her if you will find this section challenging.

What happened next is best summed up by Alecto101 in this post which I urge you all to read (also please read this followup thread by the same person). Her recollection of what happened at that panel is extremely accurate. I was there, and that is what happened. It was not dealt with adequately by anyone there in an official capacity. Most people who wanted to say something in follow up raised the fact that Alecto101 had not had her question and concerns adequately addressed, and when the people on the stage did so, it was in an inappropriate way that put the emotional and intellectual workload back on the person who had rightly raised legitimate concerns.

I have absolutely no patience with the people who immediately strawmanned (Oh, you don’t want police there at all - you can’t exclude attendees based on job) - I was there and at no point did Alecto101 suggest that.

What I’m trying to say is something EK said much more eloquently: “Concerns about how police participate in 9W and the separation of their jobs and their everyday lives as fans are ABSOLUTELY valid and not the same as “ban cops”.“

The developments since have been a little more positive, and I’m hoping that the reconstitution can be used as a way to build in representation of PoC from the beginning rather than trying to add on later. The way 9W works for members of the LGBTQ or disabled communities needs to be the way it works for the BaME community too, or it is not diverse (I’ve paraphrased here. I’m pretty sure I’ve just mangled the original quote. I can’t remember who said it but it wasn’t originally me).

For followup, I recommend reading Avery Delany’s thread here and this thread on the official Nine Worlds twitter account. This web page from Nine Worlds is also very important reading. If you have the physical, emotional, and mental spoons to do so, please consider signing up to be part of the future.

Finally, if you’re thinking about writing to Alecto, please first consider this tweet from the official Nine Worlds Team: “We do not want people to interact with the blogger on our behalf. We do not need defending. We do not want them pursued again for conversations they don’t want to continue. Their opinions are valid and we are glad to have heard them. “ and just DON’T.

After that I had more con crash, and tried to manage it myself in the quiet room, before worrying that my nose blowing was going to upset those who had sensory overload and needed genuine quiet, and ran away to my room where E wrapped me in a blanket and fed me biscuits until I was human again. She is awesome and I’m totally in her debt. (Thread here of what I struggled with wrt the quiet room - I am not saying it should go away BTW - I don’t know what the right answer is, just that I found it challenging for my own particular issues)

The end of the con was then barrelling towards me at a terrifying speed. I went off site for food with some friends, and then we all formed half of a team for the unofficial “The Not The End of the Con Quiz” as team Last Best Hope for Victory, and we only went and bloody won! Massive props to @knittedace and @laalratty who basically carried our team through two rounds pretty much on their own (even though one of our team who shall remain nameless nearly submitted “Aragorn” as the name of the giant spider in Harry Potter, which was caught before we submitted for marking, but they shall not live it down... for a while anyway :))

(Team Last Best Hope for Victory. Actual quiz victors!)

Went to bed at midnight after several rounds of Slash, which was really the perfect end to a great con (even if I did keep crashing).

(Me on my way home. I look pretty knackered there, but it doesn’t even touch how completely mentally (and to some extent physically) exhausted I was, and still am. Completely worth it though.)

Friday found [here]

I got a full night’s sleep! I was still tired but it wasn’t too bad. I think I grabbed a nap at some point between panels but for the life of me I can’t say for sure when. Just that I really needed it. It was also the first day when I sat on or ran a panel.

ALCHEMY AND CHEMISTRY IN SF/FANTASY

This ended up being more about the history of chemistry and alchemy through time with a few examples of how it isn’t done accurately in either SF or Fantasy. Not what I was expecting, to be sure, but I still enjoyed it. I recognised a lot of it from a programme about the history of science and chemistry by Prof Jim Al Khalili on the BBC. The person presenting used to teach Chemistry and thus knew their stuff.

My only concern is that they said they were probably going to take longer than the slot assigned to them willy nilly like. Which. People have to get to things. Thankfully volunteers do pop their head in near the end of the slot if needed and it over ran a bit but not by too much. 

Something that is important to note, and that not many realise but the presenter here made sure people knew, is that alchemy and chemistry aren’t that different in many ways. It isn’t like astrology and astronomy. Alchemy is where chemistry came from, like its ancestor, more than anything else, and there was this period of transition where it gradually grew from alchemy into what we realise as the modern day science of chemistry. 

HARRY POTTER AND THE CURSED CHILD APPRECIATION

... behind the scenes footage of the first cast rehearsing the play. Clemmett as Albus and Boyle as Scorpius. Not in costume/wig but look at Albus glomping his best mate. Look!

I went to see this play when it was still new, when we had to keep the secret safe and before the script was published. I loved it. I remember the little girl next to me in utter awe about the stage as we walked in. I remember of the Dementor flying just above my head. The thump that got you in your core as time travel took place. Adoring Scoripus so so much. My heart breaking during the scene with Albus and Scorpius on the stairs, and with the cast at the end when they must let events play out. And I remember learning that a lot of Potter fans weren’t a big fan of the play. 

So when I got an e-mail asking if I’d be willing to be on a panel about appreciating Cursed Child? I was all in. And when we were trying to figure out who would mod it I volunteered and so it began. 

It was a great panel. Me who had only seen it, not read it. Someone who’d only read it. People who’d done both. People who know a lot about plays and how they work and theatre and the like. 

We talked about the legacy of pressure of family, how that impacted Albus and Scorpius, and how there was these two stories - the kids and the adults. How we think it works that the characters aren’t these perfect adults and parents who do no wrong. Harry has a lot of trauma that the others around him don’t and that brushes up against the plot and also the needs Albus himself has. It’s messy and we think it works. There was also a lot of discussion around how it works as a play, how that makes it different from a book and the impact this probably had on reception. Play texts are fundamentally different from traditional prose and this can make it hard for those not used to reading them, who don’t know how to literally read between the lines. And we had huge appreciation for the stage craft from all sides of production.

I’m not turning this into a blow by blow of the panel. But there was a lot of love for the play. And considering this panel was up against the Black Panther panel? I think we did well. I am sad I didn’t get to go to the Black Panther panel but Nine worlds has not yet invented time travel so alas. I had a lot of fun, I hope others did too.

TOP OF THE SFF COPS

...tragically nobody mentioned Odo until I suggested him at the end. So I’m sticking him in here.

This panel is slightly infamous at this point, and going in I had no idea. Whilst I knew there were issues with a separate panel and a serving police officer being placed on it, I didn’t know this one would blow up. So far as I knew there’d been a similar one last year and I’d only heard good things. I also know that I have a lot of privilege being white and despite being queer I pass.... but I’ll go into that in a separate post later. Will post a link here when up.

A lot of genre fiction has police or security type characters in it. From X-Files to Star Trek to Discworld to Alien Nation and way way more. And like many professions who are portrayed on TV or otherwise intersect with it a lot (doctors, archeologists, writers, scientists) a lot of it isn’t done particularly accurately. So a group of people who work in law enforcement in various ways decided to do a session on which characters do their actual job best and in line with actual standards. It was made clear that they were there on a personal basis and not as an on duty or official representative type thing. 

They put forth a set of criteria - things like knows the law, exercises discretion, compassion, does the day to day hard work and not just the action stuff and so on. Mulder? Is right out. Scully however was in, and the only character I recognised. So I was mostly went by who sounded the best and it ended up being the guy from Discworld who wont the vote. I don’t know the books well though so who knows. This was literally the entire panel. Still, I can see in retrospect how it would make some people uncomfortable.

It was an okay panel. I wasn’t expecting it to be a big vote thing, and more of a discussion type thing but in hindsight  that may have caused more issues. 

LET THE PAST DIE: SACRIFICING SACRED COWS IN STAR WARS THE LAST JEDI

This was put into a room far too small for what it needed to be. People were crowding in and it wasn’t great. Not long after it started a volunteer came in and offered up the room across the hall that had way more seating, so we voted on it and unsurprisingly we moved across. This would have been easier for some to do than others but it also have people who needed more space that space whilst letting people in. But it likely caused issues for those who have a harder time moving. I’d had a big dizzy spell on my way to this but seemed to be okay moving. 

Part way through I decided to start live tweeting it and you can find that HERE. I’m not really sure what else to add but it was an interesting panel. Lots of talk about letting whiney fanboys whine to themselves, a lot of stuff they keep going on about was also in or also missing from the original trilogy. Nobody explained Palpatine until the prequel trilogy after all. He just turned up as a vague big bad when needed for plot. One panelist wished them the prequel trilogy ‘they deserve’ which amused me.

What I found most interesting though was a note on the green milk scene with Luke. I’ve seen people joke and deride that scene a lot since the movie came out. But one of the panelists, a woman from with roots in Hong Kong, said that it really struck a chord with her in relation to the diaspora. It reminded her of going into Tesco and finally seeing a noodle that isn’t exactly the same but reminds her a lot of something from home. And this was Luke claiming something that reminds him of where he came from even as he’s far away from it. It had honestly never occurred to me but it makes so much sense, and gives that scene a lot more value. I have no idea if the writers did that on purpose or if they did it as the easy joke though.

LAYERS OF MEANING: THE DIMENSIONAL DIFFERENCES BETWEEN ENGLISH, CHINESE, AND SIGN LANGUAGE

I loved this! This was hosted by a woman who was born in China and whose first language is Mandarin, but moved to Britain as a kid and later in life learnt BSL and now works as a sign language interpreter. She does this for Nine Worlds in various panels, as well as hosting a few sessions relating this to herself. And so she decided to do a panel that talks about her three languages as they’re all very different and go at language in different ways.

It was awesome.

...Mulan is not at all relevant but she is Chinese this is the best gif I could find that is both nerdy and has the writing system talked about in this session. And also, y’know, Mulan.

She isn’t a linguist, which she made sure everyone knew. But I think that made it work. It was also kinda amused because on the front row on one half of the aisle was a native speaker of BSL, and on the front row of the other half was someone who knows Mandarin better and I get the feeling probably came from a different part of the Chinese speaking world. But I’m just assuming there. And the interplay between the three was informative but also amusing.

I kinda knew the general concepts of what she was talking about. Or very vague versions of the concepts anyway. English is phonetic and the letters themselves have no meaning. D implies nothing when used in dog or door etc and it can be polysyllabic. Mandarin is logarithmic, it’s tonal and uses that rather than multiple syllables and it doesn’t have individual letters. The symbol for ‘female, woman’ 女 but as a radical can become a part of words like ‘calm/peace’ 安 which has the radicals for woman and home. Which, being at home is calming so I get that. There are also some not great words with woman as a radical too. 

And then there is sign language which doesn’t have just the mouth to speak. It has two hands, your face and your mouth. It takes place in a 3D space and adjectives are often included as part of the word, not separate to it. You can say entire sentences with a gesture, and you pick up on ways of expressing things because they look interesting in the same way you’d vocalise something a certain way because it sounds nice..

It was interesting. I don’t know a lot about language, and anything too technically worded would have lost me. But this didn’t and this was another of my favourite panels this year.

THE POLITICS OF ACTIVISM IN MARVEL COMICS

So I don’t know a lot about the comics. I’ve read a couple Wolverine books but that is about it. But I thought I’d go along and listen cause it seemed interesting. Jaime was hosting it, someone who’d worked on the comics was meant to be there but had to pull and out and so Jaime was left by themselves but... Jaime did a good job. 

A lot of the specifics were beyond me. But it seemed to be a common theme that activism within the comics would change the world too much beyond the baseline - a baseline that needed to remain stable. And a fear of how the much vaulted cis het white male would take it I’d imagine though I don’t remember that being touched on a lot.

I did comment at one bit. I tried to do a ‘I only really know the movies so maybe this is stated in-verse’ type of disclaimer and then was given what felt a bit like I’d been shot down with ‘comics only!’ despite others bringing MCU up before including by the mod. If they hadn’t, I’d have said nothing at all. But I may have just been a bit sensitive. In any case, I wondered if perhaps the characters did do things, within the parameters of their non-hero lives. Tony Stark is the CEO of a massive company after all, maybe he funds charities, treats workers well and make sure workers rights are a thing etc, invests responsibly. I dunno. And we just don’t see it much because it isn’t about punching people. I don’t remember a lot of what was said after that as I was too busy berating myself for daring to speak in a comics panel. Note to self, never go to one again, it is not meant for me. The vague idea I had about an X-Men as metaphor panel for next year? Likely wont submit that now.

But it was well moderated. People got a chance to speak, bounce ideas around and I think what I said was taken in as part of that. The session didn’t get stuck on one thing and it flowed through topics and ideas and the like and it was interesting. Except for that one moment I did genuinely enjoy it. Given the last minute alterations due to a key component having to drop out it was very well done.

... why do tumblr gifs all have to be so big? 

DR MAGNETHANDS

This is kind of hard to describe, but it was very adult friendly, It had Captain Picard with swearing crashing the moon onto London, and Theresa May as a monster head fighting against a butterfly made out of lamb chops in some kind of anti-Brexit accidental metaphor. Especially as the lamb chop butterfly was a heroic character that Theresa treated as a bad guy.  Everyone boo’d her at every turn.

It’s kinda hard to describe in any logical way what this session was like. Drawn off of audience suggestions and participation it’s basically crack fic made manifest.

... giant jellyfish in the sky didn’t happen, but were a distinct possibility.

It was just pure fun really. I laughed a lot, I had a great time, it was awesome.

SEX AT HOGWARTS

Another session that needed a bigger room. I got there pretty early and so had a good seat and then being a tad hyper I decided the room needed mood music. So I searched for romantic music in Spotify and played it. This is whilst the room was mostly empty and I did stop before the session started. Those who could actually hear it seemed amused. Not sure if it was at me or the music. And there were lots of tipsy people around.

We were also graced with Professor McGonagall who visited us and gave us all a good staring at. 

Much like the late night panel on Friday, it was a pretty lively discussion with lots of absurdity and very clearly adult only. There was a sensible power point that combined info released after the books about who was dating who, comics and some parodies of what sex ed at Hogwarts might look like. It’s not what I’d have done but given it’s slot it worked out pretty well.

...given the topic, probably best to have a gif of adult characters. Also it’s cute.

There was discussion of what counts as bestiality in a world where all sorts of beings are sentient. I even posited the question that if someone kept up with polyjuice for nine months, could someone usually lacking a uterus become pregnant and give birth? This was laughed down and dismissed as it was meant to. Think it was kinda obvious in how I delivered it that I was being absurd. There was a lot of speculation of what portraits get up to and.... yeah. it was exactly as it sounds.

A lot of fun, and probably nothing teens haven’t heard or thought before but still, a good thing they weren’t there.

I’d have liked to go to bar and play Slash but alas, I was tired so I went to bed. Hoping for sleep and rather sad that the next day would be my last for another year.

I’m not doing any panels but @cottonwoolfairy and I seem to have volunteered to host the Saturday Midnight Movie, which will be TIME BANDITS. Join us for time travel, weird adventure, beanbag sprawls, Evil, and free sweets...

At con, made my bag Winterhawk.