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Dragon*Con 2024 Write Up

I am pretty sure that this con has been better for my mental health than many other things have been. Even considering that I’m a smol introvert who likes to hide in the dark with her keyboard.

I had a great balance of panels and workshops this year. I moderated four panels, taught two workshops, and was on another five panels. Slow year (I only walked 15.83 miles) and that was actually pretty sweet. I was also minioning for a lot of the Hourly Writing Workshops which also helped me with working on some drafting and also learning more things! I always get useful things out of listening to Mike (Stackpole) and Bryan (Young) and Benji (Richards). We had a great group of attendees too – lots of good questions.

I am extremely blessed in that I had amazing panelists for each of the panels that I moderated. DB Jackson/David B. Coe and DL Wainright are always amazing to have on panels, as is Constance Wagner. Meeting new people, Daniel Schinhofen, Ryan Cahill (who the rest of the Irish mythology panel agreed we could just to listen to forever with that sweet Irish accent), Seressia Glass, Roy Kilgard, Milton J. Davis, Shane McInnis, Kevin A. Davis, and D.R. Perry! Seriously, they’re all fantastic creators and academics and I still cannot get over the fact that we got an actual astrophysicist for the Astronomical Phenomena in High Fantasy panel y’all.

The panels I didn’t have to moderate also had some fantastic moderators and I love them for it. Panel Moderation is NOT easy. Jennifer Liang, Kristin Jackson, Sue Kisenwether, Carol Malcolm, and ChelseaBytes were superlative, like I cannot tell you enough about how much they are good at their jobs and keeping all of us on track and on topic.

Fellow panelists who just rock it out of the park every time: K.T. Hanna, K. N. Lee, Erika Lance, Marx Pyle, Alison Tracy, Lilbit, Jess L. M. Anderson, Bethany Brookshire, Wayland Smith, Michael Collins, Morgan A McLaughlin McFarland, Niki Veasey, Brian Doob, Shayna Adelman, and Billy Todd.

EDIT: Because I’m an idiot, I totally forgot to thank all my Track Directors and their hordes of volunteers who make everything smooth going for guests and attending professionals. It takes a village and they exemplify awesome each and every day. So here’s to Kellen-Kelley Harkins, Carol Malcolm, Jennifer Liang, and the awesome cabal that runs the Digital Media track.

High points from the con:

“How many murders for a novel?” Question from a workshop discussing mystery story structures.

Getting to hang out with Alli Martin.

Random swag getting shoved into my hands as I made my way through the Marriott – including two small bags with dice, cards, and stickers and quite possible the absolute best piece of swag I have ever gotten – A bright red Campaign button proudly exclaiming “Handmaids for Harris.”

Getting to talk about magical contract law and why words matter for 2 panels back to back (because Jennifer Liang loves me).

Seeing the panel room for the Asexuality panel full to bursting again for the second year in a row. It makes me so happy and teary.

Sue gave me Ace Flag Lego earrings.

Bethany Brookshire and I got to sit next to each other on our panel which both of us were way more amused by then it probably merited.

Multiple people telling me that they loved the panels I was moderating/workshops I was teaching and that I was a good moderator.

Getting to see and hug so many friends.

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Fannish_Fifty: Book Club (2018) A Visual Crackfic

Book Club (2018)  was An Experience. A cracktastic experience.

So the basic premise for this movie is “Four friends’ lives are turned upside down when their book club tackles the infamous “50 Shades of Grey.” From discovering new romance to rekindling old flames, they inspire each other to make their next chapter the best chapter.” (Thanks, Google)

That…that does not really capture how incredibly bonkers this film is.  Because this film is absolutely  B-O-N-K-E-R-S.   Like it’s two bananas short of a banana split.  

How I came to see this film since it had not been on my radar at all. Well, Spice #3 texted me and went “So I need you to watch this movie with me”  which was both very suspicious and very intriguing.  Anytime one of the Spices tell me “you gotta see this” it is always either going to be mind-blowingly awesome or mind-blowingly shitmazing.  There’s no in-between. 

It has an amazing cast,  Candice Bergen, Mary Steenburgen, Craig T. Nelson, Andy Garcia, Jane Fonda, Diane Keaton, and Don Johnson are most of the main cast and it’s wonderful in the way that I snickered hard enough to strain muscles watching this movie. 

I straight up cannot believe this movie got made.   This is the kind of movie where you have Very 

Sincere Doubts that anyone involved in the writing was sober by any metric.  This is visual crackfic and I know crackfic.   I “came of age”  during the wild west fandom years – I have read crackfic and written crackfic, I can tell you what quality crack from non-quality crack is.

This was glorious crackfic of the kind where it took me back to the LJ days pre-Strikethrough and it was amazing.

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Fannish_Fifty: Clue (1985)

CW: Mention of Queerbaiting Under The Picture

Clue (1985) 

Okay, yes, I can see some of you already clutching pearls that I went 30 years without ever having seen this movie. I’m just going to put up a mental sign that says “I grew up weird and not totally on this continent” and just leave it at that, alright? 

Anyways, Tim Curry is the best.  This is known.  This role was perfect for him and it was hysterical watching him run around like a mad thing and dragging everyone with him.  

I spent most of the film believing Leslie Ann Warren was Susan Sarandon.  I apparently cannot tell them apart in this specific role. 

It was sort of amusing to watch them all devolve into complete bonkers. I have now also seen the scene where one of my favorite gifs of all times comes from. Mrs. White FTW.  It was entertaining for a movie based around a popular board game.

Though I do feel some kind of way about the gay man being “gifted” the lead pipe and then later on, when it’s revealed it’s actually queerbaiting and he’s a secret straight plant –  I know, I know, the movie is 37 and stigma and society and blackmail and all that.  

It’s believable and that’s the problem.  That thing happened. It happened probably more often than we will ever know.   To see it here in a movie that’s a comic mystery movie…I just wish they’d chosen something, anything else for that character’s background. It left a decidedly sour taste in my mouth. 

Glad I watched it, I get why people love it, but I’m not likely to rewatch it.

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Fannish_Fifty: Top Gun Maverick (2022)

Top Gun Maverick 2022 – one of the more talked about movies in several friend groups I inhabit. AKA It’s COOL, Totally FINE, didn’t need THOSE EMOTIONS and also WHOO DOGFIGHTS movie.

I watched this one directly after watching the first one (for the first time)  which was An Experience.   I am un-endingly glad I did not see this one in theaters.   It was intense enough on my living room TV, watching it in the theater would have been bad for my nerves and senses. 

I came to the conclusion that much like with Star Trek (2009) and Zachary Quinto –  Top Gun Maverick needed to wait until Miles Teller was old enough to star in it.   The casting there placed against the casting of Anthony Edwards in the first one was absolutely stellar – especially visually.  Like that scene with the piano? The nostalgia tipped spear of feels that gave me was really visceral. That was only the beginning too.

Val Kilmer broke my heart and I was in a glass case of emotions for all of that. OW. This is supposed to be an action movie, it’s not supposed to rip out my still beating heart and show it to me as well.

I will admit a lot of the impetus for me to see this movie originally (and also providing the push needed to finally sit down and watch the first one) came from having read a spectacular crossover fanfic that got me super curious about the source material. 

I love the Mav and Hondo relationship – it’s the best.   Overall, this was a good successor to the first one.  Just enough callbacks to the first one and it was its own movie with its own plot.   It wasn’t a copy-paste New Generation remake of the first one. 

10/10 would rewatch (but not on a huge screen. I’m old and my heart can’t take the pressure). 

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Fannish Fifty: Top Gun (1986)

Top Gun (1986) – the movie that broke box office records and became not only an iconic hit but also a culturally relevant one, landing itself in the National Film Registry.

It was also, up to Jan 2023, a movie I’d never seen before. Despite seeing every other single action and war flick known under the sun because of my father – somehow this movie missed the cut. 

It wasn’t until people in my friend circle started sputtering when I told them that I hadn’t seen it that I realized I should probably rectify that.  Also, the sequel had just hit streaming and that one looked fascinating. 

Upon asking my parents about why I’d never seen it with them, the answer I got back was that there was some trauma around the movie and someone in their friend circle on base using a lot of Top Gun references with the guy they were cheating on their husband with around the time it was released.

My initial two reactions to this film were as follows: 

  • Okay so Tom Cruise has just always been Like That.  
  • Oh hey I know that song/actor!

All joking aside, I was entertained by the film and I can definitely see the nostalgia bits that everyone loves.  I’m a sucker for a good action flick and this one delivered.

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Fannish_50: The Mummy (1999) : Jonathan Carnahan

This is one of my favorite movies, I won’t lie. I often put it on as background noise if I’m not watching or listening to something specific. It’s essentially my favorite kind of story – adventure, curses, found family, and hijinks. A kind of happy ending that gives me resolution while also leaving it open for future stories. However, one of my favorite parts of it is the characterization of the main protagonists. Specifically Jonathan Carnahan.

Jonathan occupies a really important role in the movie, serving as comic relief that is actually comic rather than stupid and who also serves as a valuable plot mover. He comes off as the incompetent buffoon except while the buffoon part could possibly be argued for, Jonathan is anything but incompetent.

So let’s review what we know to be true from the film itself. Jonathan can read Ancient Egyptian, even if it is not to the same degree his sister can. He’s clearly interested in archaeology to the point of being on digs himself – which would have required extensive schooling to qualify for those kinds of permits. The “dig down in Thebes” line alludes to that and Evie clearly believes him when he tells her where he found it.

Jonathan also doesn’t miss when he shoots and he clearly has some boxing experience. Given the timeperiod of the movie, he’s the right age to have fought in WWI (So’s Rick and the French Foreign Legion did fight in WWI but that’s a different post) and that makes everything about him make so much more sense.

Jonathan, much like Phryne Fisher in one of my favorite period mystery shows, hasn’t taken anything seriously since 1918 and for pretty much the same reasons. He’s exactly the sort of soldier who got disillusioned from seeing what he did and since it didn’t actually kill him, he’s jumped from that into something slightly less dangerous. Archaeology was dangerous, not necessarily from curses, but just from people with guns shooting at you. He’s living it up when he can and trying not to give in to those darker impulses.

Evie: Have you no respect for the dead? 

Jonathan: Of course I do, but sometimes I’d rather like to join them.

John Hannah, who plays Jonathan, conveyed all this perfectly on screen. He didn’t have to spell it out for us, just the hints of it existing were perfect.

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Fannish_Fifty Challenge for 2023

So one of the things I am doing in 2023 is the fannish_fifty challenge – where you post about fannish and fandom things once a week for fifty weeks. It sounded fun so I signed up for this year. It’s very casual but I think just having the structure will be helpful. I’ve decided to not choose a firm theme at the moment, but that will likely change as we go.

It officially starts on Jan 2nd of 2023. Come back then to see what the first week’s post will be.

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Hostages

A four episode documentary about the Iranian Hostage Crisis and despite having a pretty good understanding (so I thought) about this event, this show knocked me for six. It was impressively well done – they approached it objectively and interviewed both the hostages and the hostage-takers.

Watching this series gave a deeper understanding of the events surrounding the hostage crisis – the geopolitical and historical context as well as being able to see the footage from back then with those involved to the elder selves commenting back on that time.

Do not give this one a miss. It is well worth your time.

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Movie Review: Dr. Strange and the Multiverse of Madness

Dr. Strange and the Multiverse of Madness (2022) is the latest MCU film out in theaters. Hotly anticipated because it was touted as the first real “Marvel horror film.” It’s directed by Sam Raimi and was overall roundly entertaining but like so many Marvel movies in Phases 2-Current, it falls apart if you think about it for longer than two seconds.

I wanted to like this more than I did. I wanted this to be cleverer than it was. I am absolutely thrilled we got some of the new characters we got and seeing some others getting pulled in. There was one of the post-credit scenes that put me over the moon. However, this was a lot like Endgame, in that it was a lot of fun scenes very lightly tied together by a kind of plot through-line sort of. Also I kept calling it Dr. Strange and the Mountains of Madness which would have been a much different sort of movie (though a fascinating one, I won’t lie).

A more spoilery review will go up on my Patreon, if you’d like to read it there. Let me know what you think in the comments – preferably with little/no spoilers!

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Wheel of Time (Series)

Books That Made Me Part Whateverith: Wheel of Time (series) by Robert Jordan (feat. Brandon Sanderson for the finale)

When I was younger and living overseas, one of the greatest gifts that I could or would ever get were the huge Media Mail bags of books from my former librarian grandmother. We didn’t always have the best of relationships, but she never failed to support me in what I wanted to do and she would always send me books. Books of all stripes and sizes and genres that she would get at library sales and used book fairs. It was not unusual to get several books in a series, all out of order. So I’d get book 1 and then book 5 and book 7 and then have to piece the rest of the series together by myself. However there was one M Bag that carried a prize beyond measure – sometime between late 1999 and early 2000 – we got an M Bag that held all eight of the Wheel of Time books in it.

A complete series (so far – as the 9th book had not yet been published) was a rare thing to find in these bags and I immediately set upon them like a starving feral child who hadn’t seen decent food in a while (according to my sibling at the time). It caused a bit of conflict with my mother who worried about me potentially reading things that I wasn’t old enough to understand until I pointed out that if I had questions, I had a track record of asking them to explain stuff. I was 14 almost 15 and exceedingly resolved that nothing was going to get in my way of reading these books. The covers were glorious and catnip to my brain and I cannot stress enough how amazing it was that they were all there so I did not have wait or wonder what happened next or how exactly we got from point C to Point X. It was all there for me and it was a glorious feast.

I sped through these books faster than I think anyone would believe possible (unless you’ve seen me read and I was faster then than I am now) and I was completely subsuming myself in the Wheel of Time world and the characters and everything about them. I got to the end of Book 8 and screamed out loud because that was a nasty cliffhanger and where was the next book? Was there even a next book? Surely, we’re not going to be left hanging forever right?!!? Understandably everyone else in the household was not amused by my outburst but I maintain the scream was warranted. Might have helped that it wasn’t almost bedtime when it happened.

I remembered the Internet was a thing and started diving into the Wheel of Time fan sites and the forums and reading through all the different fan theories and speculations and the excitement over the ninth book coming out and I was a joyful fanthing. Waiting for books 9 and 10 was horrific especially since I had yet to be able to convince anyone back home to send me book 9 – I had to wait until I was back in the states briefly myself in order to pick 9 and 10 up. I was exceedingly fortunate that our departure date was the day after the release date for book 10 and that I had very understanding grandparents who did not mind the emergency trip to the nearest bookstore. It helped that they knew that if they didn’t take me, I was totally going to find the nearest bus route or hitchhike to the nearest bookstore that carried new releases. I was 16, looked about 10ish, and would not be stopped from this quest.

My second email address was failebashere@***** and I legitimately could not get enough of Perrin and Faile and Egwene and Gawyn and then Mat who stole my whole heart and then some. I loved watching Lan and Nynaeve and them being the definition of “its complicated.” I still (forever) want all the backstory and the additional tales of the time of legend even more so than what we did get. I could happily lose myself in this world for ages upon ages and never ever get bored. If I was stuck on a desert island with only one book series for the rest of my life, it’d be this one. No contest.

One of my college friends and I became friends because she was reading The Great Hunt and I legit just sat down across from her in the cafeteria, held out my hand, and said something along the lines of “Hi I’m [x] and I have never seen anyone else actually reading these in real life, I think we should be friends.” We are still friends to this day.

Another college friend allowed me to commission her to make me an Aes Sedai shawl. It’s handknit -the pattern assembled from 3-4 separate patterns and combined to make one of the most priceless fandom costume pieces I own. She didn’t charge me nearly enough for it, either.

I have found amazing people through this series and it never ever gets old. The squee we all share is intensely and deeply infectious and joyful. It’s one of the happiest fandom communities I get to share in.

I never ever thought I would see an adaptation of Wheel of Time – especially not a live action one. I have been cautiously hopeful during the initial announcements and then we got casting news and I got more excited. We got a teaser and my faith and confidence grew.

We got a trailer and I’m pretty sure I stopped breathing for a good minute there as I just got overwhelmed with FEELING. My roommate watched me blink back tears as I watched the trailer another three times, just to make sure I was actually seeing this in real life and not an extremely detailed dream/hallucination.

We’ve got a show. The first episode premieres tomorrow. We’re getting an adaptation that as far as we can tell looks like its going to be AMAZING. It looks like the showrunners not only understand the source material but they’re respecting it. The cast looks lovely and the settings were breathtaking from what we got in the trailer.

Just like there were no words for what it meant to me to have been seen and represented in Every Heart A Doorway, there really aren’t the words to encapsulate what it means to see this world in live action, to be able to watch this story that I love from the beginning. To know that the show is going to bring in new fans to come and share in the joyful squee. It’s exhilarating. I can barely wait.

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