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I attended Scintillation! Many events happened while I was there. I will recap some of them.
Now I Talk About Books! (6/10)
When I registered for the con, I had checked a box saying I would be willing to be on a panel, figuring, essentially, that if I was needed for some reason, it would be helpful for me to have checked the box, and if not, they could easily ignore my having checked the box. There was not a space to put anything more fine grained than "willing", and I wasn't too worried about clarifying my exact level of interest. If I had been I mostly would have wanted to specify that I hoped I wasn't being presumptuous as a first time attendee, and that obviously I had no expectations or anything, and would just have fun being at the con, which seemed like information no one desperately needed from me, and I assumed that it was all pretty much safe to assume could be taken for granted. When I was asked if I could/would/was available to be on two panels, my first thoughts were:
The excitement of the Rosemary Kirstein reading had masked my underlying nervousness about the Terra Ignota panel. My background plan had largely been to trust that if there were super important things for me to know ahead of time, I would have been told them. This is not, shall we say, my usual way of proceeding. I sat down in the front of the room—a room which included many people who were at least as qualified to me to opine on this series, and one person who was certainly far better positioned and the panel began.
I had chosen the worst seat. Specifically, I had chosen the seat where Jo invited me to introduce myself first, and I did not know whether this meant to just say my name, my name and a a sentence about myself, or my name and how I got into the books, or what. I also didn't want to ask for clarification on the prompt "please introduce yourself", so I guessed. I cannot now tell you what I said. I definitely said more than my name. I definitely ended by saying "and now I will stop talking" or words to that effect. I definitely wish I had gone third so I had two people to pattern match from. I am also fairly confident that no one else is thinking about this but me, and I am really only thinking about it because I am writing a panel recap (also, as you will see shortly, there is a lot about this panel I can't recap in detail (same with my other panel on Sunday). The panel began with a section where we talked about the appeal of the books; more or less recommending them to folks who had not read them, before those people were banished from the room. "Banished" is not overselling it, I don't think, because it is unclear whether someone could have remained in the room while admitting they had not read the books. They were not advised to leave so much as ordered to go. I will recap some of what was said in the pre-spoilers portion of the panel, particularly what I hoped to get across (whether or not these are the words that came out of my mouth: who knows).
To me, the books are great because they explore a society that is neither drastically dystopian not shallowly utopian. They look at a society that has been transformed in various ways with respect to politics, culture, religion, gender, and really push through on those changes. That is just one of the many things it is doing, but that is part of how I sell it to people when I recommend it. There is also a density and depth to the other texts it is referencing and engaging in conversation with. I think this part can be a double edged sword for people.* The first paragraph of chapter one makes clear that it will be drawing on enlightenment philosophy, despite being set in the 2400s. That grabbed me, but might make someone feel like it is going to expect them to know all sorts of things about all sorts of texts that they haven't read. I tried to convey that I am sure I missed a huge proportion of the allusions and references in them as I read. Some of them I picked up on subsequent reads, and some I learned from reading what other people had to say after finishing reading, but my enjoyment of the books was not lessened for missing these things myself. Certain connections are essential, but these tend to be explicit in the text. Other things are just rewards for diving deep and exploring, whether on one's own or in community.
After people who had not read the full series got banished, we got to talk about the whole series. After, someone on the panel said they were surprised we hadn't spent much time at all talking about [major defining event of the last book], which, shockingly, we hadn't! I then thought about all of the other things we hadn't talked about. There were so many. And this wasn't because we were goofing around. There is just a lot to talk about. The thing we didn't talk about, that one was very surprising, though, because, in a sense, plot-wise that's what two thirds of book was about, and it was basically not mentioned on the panel, really? And I didn't even notice that because: so much other stuff to talk about!
*I feel like I have looked this up before but, aren't most swords double edged? How does this phrase make sense? Is there a word for skeuomorphic idioms?
So, before the panel I did have some nuanced thoughts I wanted to try to carefully convey, but also these books provoked strong feelings from me, so there were definitely points on the panel when thinky-brain lost out to vibes-brain and I made points via just channeling my affective reactions to things. I don't know if that is how one is supposed to do these things, but that is how I did it?
The panel is over and I have been thinking about things people said on it for almost a full week now. I may actually have reduced my level of hostility to a character I have hostile feelings at by a non-trivial degree! So, yay for panel! And while it is very exciting that everyone was wearing masks it also meant that I had no idea what Ada's reactions to any of the things we were saying were, until after when she said she had been smiling the whole time. It is true that a scowl would have been perceptible, I suppose.
Anyway, the panel ended and folks who, like me, had not gotten a proper dinner amidst all the panels were grabbing some food. So, I ran up to my room and dropped offall my things. Almost all my things. I hung on to my notebook and a pen, in case I wanted to take notes on things, as I'd been doing earlier in the day. We got some take out from a nearby restaurant and ate it on the benches in front of Journey to the West. Now is the part of the story where I forget to take my notebook and pen with me. It was a very nice pen and it had my name on it and the notebook had a small smattering of notes, so I don't care about it nearly as much, but I didn't realize any of this at the time.
Dinner was great, though. I don't mean the food, though, I did enjoy my meal. What I mean is that con time is hyper compressed. You just spend such huge stretches of time with a cluster of people that you accelerate a lot of the getting to observe personalities and such. Even people who I really only met a day ago felt well known. So there was already a comfort to being around the people who had elicited such excited nervousness back on Thursday. This is why I wanted to be able to go back and calm my former self down. It was only a day later that I was at ease with myself (or, at least, as at ease as I ever am).
We head back in and my evening comes to a close.
Now I Talk About Books! (6/10)
When I registered for the con, I had checked a box saying I would be willing to be on a panel, figuring, essentially, that if I was needed for some reason, it would be helpful for me to have checked the box, and if not, they could easily ignore my having checked the box. There was not a space to put anything more fine grained than "willing", and I wasn't too worried about clarifying my exact level of interest. If I had been I mostly would have wanted to specify that I hoped I wasn't being presumptuous as a first time attendee, and that obviously I had no expectations or anything, and would just have fun being at the con, which seemed like information no one desperately needed from me, and I assumed that it was all pretty much safe to assume could be taken for granted. When I was asked if I could/would/was available to be on two panels, my first thoughts were:
- "wait, me?"
- "oh this is so exciting!"
- "wait, the authors of these books will be there" (panicked affect)
- "wait, the authors of these books will be there" (excited affect)
- "wait, me?"
- oh, this is so exciting!
The excitement of the Rosemary Kirstein reading had masked my underlying nervousness about the Terra Ignota panel. My background plan had largely been to trust that if there were super important things for me to know ahead of time, I would have been told them. This is not, shall we say, my usual way of proceeding. I sat down in the front of the room—a room which included many people who were at least as qualified to me to opine on this series, and one person who was certainly far better positioned and the panel began.
I had chosen the worst seat. Specifically, I had chosen the seat where Jo invited me to introduce myself first, and I did not know whether this meant to just say my name, my name and a a sentence about myself, or my name and how I got into the books, or what. I also didn't want to ask for clarification on the prompt "please introduce yourself", so I guessed. I cannot now tell you what I said. I definitely said more than my name. I definitely ended by saying "and now I will stop talking" or words to that effect. I definitely wish I had gone third so I had two people to pattern match from. I am also fairly confident that no one else is thinking about this but me, and I am really only thinking about it because I am writing a panel recap (also, as you will see shortly, there is a lot about this panel I can't recap in detail (same with my other panel on Sunday). The panel began with a section where we talked about the appeal of the books; more or less recommending them to folks who had not read them, before those people were banished from the room. "Banished" is not overselling it, I don't think, because it is unclear whether someone could have remained in the room while admitting they had not read the books. They were not advised to leave so much as ordered to go. I will recap some of what was said in the pre-spoilers portion of the panel, particularly what I hoped to get across (whether or not these are the words that came out of my mouth: who knows).
To me, the books are great because they explore a society that is neither drastically dystopian not shallowly utopian. They look at a society that has been transformed in various ways with respect to politics, culture, religion, gender, and really push through on those changes. That is just one of the many things it is doing, but that is part of how I sell it to people when I recommend it. There is also a density and depth to the other texts it is referencing and engaging in conversation with. I think this part can be a double edged sword for people.* The first paragraph of chapter one makes clear that it will be drawing on enlightenment philosophy, despite being set in the 2400s. That grabbed me, but might make someone feel like it is going to expect them to know all sorts of things about all sorts of texts that they haven't read. I tried to convey that I am sure I missed a huge proportion of the allusions and references in them as I read. Some of them I picked up on subsequent reads, and some I learned from reading what other people had to say after finishing reading, but my enjoyment of the books was not lessened for missing these things myself. Certain connections are essential, but these tend to be explicit in the text. Other things are just rewards for diving deep and exploring, whether on one's own or in community.
After people who had not read the full series got banished, we got to talk about the whole series. After, someone on the panel said they were surprised we hadn't spent much time at all talking about [major defining event of the last book], which, shockingly, we hadn't! I then thought about all of the other things we hadn't talked about. There were so many. And this wasn't because we were goofing around. There is just a lot to talk about. The thing we didn't talk about, that one was very surprising, though, because, in a sense, plot-wise that's what two thirds of book was about, and it was basically not mentioned on the panel, really? And I didn't even notice that because: so much other stuff to talk about!
*I feel like I have looked this up before but, aren't most swords double edged? How does this phrase make sense? Is there a word for skeuomorphic idioms?
So, before the panel I did have some nuanced thoughts I wanted to try to carefully convey, but also these books provoked strong feelings from me, so there were definitely points on the panel when thinky-brain lost out to vibes-brain and I made points via just channeling my affective reactions to things. I don't know if that is how one is supposed to do these things, but that is how I did it?
The panel is over and I have been thinking about things people said on it for almost a full week now. I may actually have reduced my level of hostility to a character I have hostile feelings at by a non-trivial degree! So, yay for panel! And while it is very exciting that everyone was wearing masks it also meant that I had no idea what Ada's reactions to any of the things we were saying were, until after when she said she had been smiling the whole time. It is true that a scowl would have been perceptible, I suppose.
Anyway, the panel ended and folks who, like me, had not gotten a proper dinner amidst all the panels were grabbing some food. So, I ran up to my room and dropped off
Dinner was great, though. I don't mean the food, though, I did enjoy my meal. What I mean is that con time is hyper compressed. You just spend such huge stretches of time with a cluster of people that you accelerate a lot of the getting to observe personalities and such. Even people who I really only met a day ago felt well known. So there was already a comfort to being around the people who had elicited such excited nervousness back on Thursday. This is why I wanted to be able to go back and calm my former self down. It was only a day later that I was at ease with myself (or, at least, as at ease as I ever am).
We head back in and my evening comes to a close.
