(x-posted)

I had a lovely time at Think GalactiCon in Chicago! I squeed about fanfic and vids to a lot of people, including people who are clearly not in fic culture (like lcohen), which was pretty funny. I talked more than I expected to.

Panels I attended:
*Species-defined gender roles in SF/F (link takes you to my notes)

*Infinite Diversity (Star Trek); a well-attended panel. I surprised myself by ranting about unethical ST doctors, for example Dr. Bashir in Sons of Mogh. Leah and I brought up the fanvid ...On the Dance Floor by sloanesomething.

*Gender and Sexuality in Fan Fiction. I talked a lot, but I don't remember what I said. I did give a shout-out to General_jinjur's Podfic archive; and I recommended Straight as a Circle by toomuchplor.

*Brown People Harshing My Squee?
About the costs (emotional and otherwise) of RaceFail and doing anti-racist work. Panelists were Candra, Karnythia, Jamie, and Pope Lizbet.

*Skipped the Sunday AM panels; ended up sitting in the commons area with a bunch of the TG concom and assorted people. I remember I did refer to vito_excalibur's parody of comic book art and said I'd post links:

These are from a couple of years ago:

How to Draw Women in Comics (According to Wizard), an LJ post with scans and commentary, by ratcreature.

Then look at vito_excalibur's brilliant reversal of it:
IM IN UR STUDIo DRAWING UR DooDZ

There are also some good parodies here at Girl Wonder (scroll down/go through the pages for pictures).

*Race, Ethnicity, and YA.
I was pleased that I'd heard of or read a lot of these books, which made me feel like YAY I know YA pretty well, but also very sad that there aren't MORE YA books about race and ethnicity. There are so few in this booming publishing market! Candra was keeping a list that will be posted eventually. Nnedi Okorafor was the other panelist (go read her book Zarah the Windseeker; it's awesome!).

Other vids I brought up:
Vogue by luminosity (a 300 fan vid/critique)
"White" and Nerdy by talitha (Psych, Gus)

Other fic I brought up:
Reading Against/Reading With: Mastering the Oppositional Discourse in Textual Healing", by emeraldwoman. ST: Reboot fic.
Daddy was a steel-driving man by livii. Sarah Connor Chronicles fic that address issues of trans identity.

ETA: I think access was pretty good at this con. The food was utterly fantastic! Good location that utilized a university in downtown Chicago--awesome.
I really liked the commons area that combined the dealers tables, food tables, registration, and social events. I *loved* the crafty stuff. (I skipped the main crafting event but did casual crafting on Friday.)
Also, bravo to karnythia for turning off the fluorescent lights for me at the Brown People Harshing My Squee panel.

This was a discussion rather than a panel; facilitated by Juliana. These are my somewhat disorganized notes. Feel free to point out any errors, or make any additions in comments. Sometimes I just wrote down authors or titles without any context!

*Buffy-verse: all the Slayers are female. I mentioned a fanfic I heard of, where a Slayer transitions to male but keeps his powers.

*Temeraire books by Naomi Novik. The Longwing dragons only choose female riders, but how do we know how the author is defining male and female? Maybe *most* of the Longwings choose female riders, but the occasional one wouldn't, and that might be regarded like queerness is in our culture. Someone also mentioned a fanfic dealing with a trans rider (FtM I think) who was supposed to inherit a Longwing. Also the dragons seem to think less about gender than the people do.

*A Companion to Wolves by Monette and Bear
*Babel 17 by Samuel Delaney</i>
*Glass House by Charles Strauss
*Cetaganda and Ethan of Athos by Lois McMaster Bujold
*Xenogenesis books by Octavia Butler
*The Gods Themselves by Isaac Asimov
*The Sparrow by Mary Doria Russell
*Richard K. Morgan
*"Torch of Honor" or perhaps the sequel--switching gender
*Grant Morrison's "The Invisisbles" (comics)
*Terry Goodkin (faily) binary magical powers between men and women
*Dune - the Bene Gesserit have secret powers around reproduction, but their ultimate goal is still male power
*China Mieville's books: the Kepri have a large division between male and female. The females are sentient and the males are basically cockroackes.
*Terry Pratchett - male and female dwarves looks the same. Monstous Regiment and Men at Arms were mentioned, but there are many Discworld books.
*Emma Bull, Finder
*Laurie Marks, the "Logic" books. Women and men are truly equal in these books, seen as soldiers and farmers and co-parents.
*Scott Sigler
*The concept of covens vs. singular male wizards. Or if male wizards are in a group, they are a secret society trying to do harm of some kind.
*Gate to Women's Country (faily, gender-essentialist)
*I ranted about my loathing for the "Hominid" trilogy by Robert J. Sawyer. They have some cool interesting concepts (all the Neanderthals are bisexual), but do a lot of gender-essentialist things and want to address the "problem of male violence".

*Star Trek. The trill are genderless, but have the experiences of male and female hosts. Some species use pheromones to control men, which is the ultimate sexual power.

*Transformers - why are they all male? Why can't they just TRANSFORM into female?

*Godzilla is female in the newest movie adaptation

*AIs as gendered vs. gender-neutral

Overall, I thought this was a very good discussion! Good depth.

Look at this fucking hotel room! It is like a fucking cruise-liner spaceship in the Fifth Element! Ruby Red is going to show up any moment!

( cut for pictures )