SF COntario Schedule, short and long

photo by Laurie Grassi of Raincoast Books

For those of you who will also be attending SFContario this November 17-19th, here’s the short and longer versions of my schedule!

What, When, Where
Creating Languages:  Saturday 10 AM; Solarium
Eating and Ethics; Saturday 11 AM; Solarium
Plot Complications (Moderator): Saturday 1 PM; Parkview
Reading: Sunday 11-11:30 AM; Parkview,
Quatloos and Credits and Latinum, Oh My! Sunday 1 PM; Solarium
Who else? and Panel Details!
Creating Languages: Many SF/F worlds have their own languages, Elvish and Klingon being two examples. From etymology to grammar to culture, there are many characteristics to consider. How do you craft languages that make sense? How does a language reflect the identities of its speakers? How do we make our languages and vocabularies believable? Alyx Dellamonica, Sephora Hosein(M), Lawrence Schoen
Eating and Ethics; What is the ethical scope of our food choices? Is buying local really better than buying imported food? Are Vegans better for the environment? How do things like socioeconomic status, mental health, and disability intersect with the ethics of food consumption? Charlotte Ashley (M), Alyx Dellamonica, Lawrence Schoen, Gunnar Wentz
Plot Complications: Characters in a story are attempting to solve a problem. In the best stories, their attempts go horribly awry. Who can forget the moment when the Crew of the Enterprise, attempting to defeat the Borg, is faced with the announcement from their beloved Captain–“I am Locutus of Borg.”  And the course of the story is changed. Or, when Boromir falls to the lure of the Ring and tries to take it, splitting up the Fellowship and changing everyone’s paths. Panelists and audience are invited to present their own favorite heart-stopping moment from books and film.  Timothy Carter; David Clink, Alyx Dellamonica (M), Cathy Hird
Quatloos and Credits and Latinum, Oh My! Economics is frequently overlooked in SF. Do adventurers simply live on nuts and berries and what they can kill? What do they pay with when they visit an inn or buy a drink? How is trade carried out, particularly between species? Is there still a struggle for resources or has science advanced to the point where anything can be fabricated? Quatloos and Credits and Latinum, Oh My!; Alyx Dellamonica, Cenk Gokce(M), Kelly Robson

Worldcon, moderating, and the #wedeservebetter panel

imageI want to give you all a spoiler-free version of the Midamericon description of the panel I moderated:

We Deserve Better: Lesbians and Bi Women for Change

In March 2016 some show killed spoilery spoiler of an spoilery spoiler spoilers. Fans launched a Twitter campaign that became mainstream news. They objected to the “Bury Your Gays” trope, referring to the disproportionately high number of lesbians and bisexual women killed on TV. Two weeks later, one of some other show‘s only lesbian couple was killed. We discuss this disturbing pattern and ask how audiences can help prevent it.

My partners in crime were Jaylee James, Nina Niskanen, and Jay Wolf.

I’m not much for freewheeling moderation. I always show up intending to listen and direct discussion, rather than talking myself, and with questions in hand. What’s more, the four of us did a certain amount of predigesting of the topic, checking out things like this (also-spoilery) list of 162 dead TV lesbians and talking about related topics like queerbaiting and fridging.

Like all good panels, we worked up more material than we actually got to discuss, circled ’round it in an order other than what follows, and we also didn’t get into one of my personal bugbears, the idea that the word “deserve” is actually quite a cruel concept. It’s an important and necessary word, but it has thorns: “You deserve this,” can be honestly intended or victim-blaming. “I deserve this” can be simple truth or blatant entitlement.

But I’m home now, and I’ve noticed that the list of questions I prepared for my panelists is interesting in its own right, a good orientation to the topic if anyone wants it. And so I decided I would post that here.

  1. Focusing first on TV, which lesbian deaths were most memorable and meaningful to you personally, both going way back and recently?
  2. Then there are deaths that aren’t necessarily canonical but that have lesbian freight around them. The fate of Ellen Ripley in the third Aliens movie comes after she’s been, to a great extent, masculinized–she’s not gay, but when she dies she has been made to look and act very butch.
  3. If a show queerbaits us and then kills one of the alleged lesbians involved, is that better or worse than if they hadn’t solicited queer viewers in the first place?
  4. Looking at the list of 150+ dead TV lesbians, I wondered: were any of those surprises, or did they trigger any Aha! or Uhoh! moments?
  5. How gender-skewed is this phenomenon? I mean, we all remember how Brokeback Mountain ends. Is it just a woman-on-woman version of fridging?
  6. I’ve mentioned fridging because it’s another common story development that we, as more sophisticated and politically savvy audiences, have become aware and critical of. All of these tropes have been the subject of discussion and debate within fandom and the writing community. What do you think of this?
  7. Now, since I’ve glided on to cinema, what about this phenom in comics and prose? In the past, there were the 1950’s bad girl lesbian dies books… does anyone know how this is playing out now?
  8. As writers, how do you balance the need to occasionally kill off characters with an awareness that every queer character is precious?
  9. If we add in characters with implied deaths, including incidental victims or even crazy killer lesbians who aren’t part of the main cast (guest star deaths, in other words) then I wonder if the question shouldn’t be: Who’s done it right? Who has survived? Who do we love who hasn’t been killed off?
I shall end off with a link offered by one of the above wonderful and lovely panelists, to Jo Chiang’s “Women who love women aren’t Tragic.”