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Registration is open for CON.TXT 2020!

More info at the official DW here.

How to Find Things

Hi all,

libraralien and I ran the How to Find Things panel. Our slide deck is available here.

We're happy to answer any questions in the comments!

Panel Notes from Fuck This Grim Cyberpunk Dystopia, Bring me Luxury Queer Space Communism!

Mods: @v_grayson and @cincodemaygirl (the t shirt cinco and Rosemary wore is available here)

The agenda:
This is a media con; we want to talk about media
We will go over the 101 concepts and then talk about some of this stuff in fiction

The concepts:
Grimdark: co-opting struggle for ~the Aesthetic~
Cyberpunk dystopia: hyper connected, hyper surveillance
Hopepunk: - DIY, "Look for the helpers," resistance, "kindness is a political act," found families
Fully automated etc etc: it's a meme, it's not 100% serious. Kind of in that semi-ironic, semi-sincere late millennial humor vein. “I can haz chzburgr” is not veterinary nutritional advice. But it has an actual desire at its core
Fully automated - I for one welcome our new robot overlords!
Luxury - for all. Things that are necessities now were once luxuries.
Communism - sux in the execution. But super hardcore capitalism isn't doing great for a lot of people.
In Space - a fresh start
Now make it queer!!!

Why is this worth doing /now/?

Weaknesses:
Has its origins in a British political movement, Western perspective
Not necessarily super intersectional, especially with regard to race

“The future is here, but it's just not evenly distributed” - William Gibson h/t zvi

Questions for the audience:
- In the words of The Good Place podcast, what's good? what works sustain you? (What things are giving you hope and motivation?)
- What works present aspects of a future that you want to work toward?

Questions from the audience (sorry, our notes were...incomplete):
- Humans as space orcs
- Why does space also include death/slaughter
- Ableism
- Maybe the rich people will go to space and we stay here and be awesome?
- Solarpunk (which we think fits into hopepunk)

Background reading:
- Fully Automated Luxury Gay Space Communism from Know Your Meme (helpful 8-minute YouTube video from Aaron Bastani is linked in the article)
- "Fully Automated Luxury Gay Space Communism": Has the time finally come for Universal Basic Income? from Paste Magazine.
- Fully Automated Luxury Communism from The Guardian. Good overview article of the phrase's beginnings in real political movements.
- Tumblr gifset and transcription from a speech given by Scott Benson
- GRIMDARK from TV Tropes
- Tumblr post with poster images and a comment: “Optimism is not always dumb. Pessimism is not always deep.”
- Ariaste's post on hopepunk on Tumblr
- Why isn’t cyberpunk better at trans representation? from The Daily Dot
- The Decolonize Mars org has resources and reading

Brainstorming media sources time!

Grimdark/dystopia:
Relies on -isms, violence (also sexual violence), dark aesthetic (often visually bad to watch b/c light levels are too low), serious, "suffering tourism"
Dystopia is often shallow, not even as bad as reality (the “current” dystopian problems have been happening for people of color for a long time)
No more white man pain!!!
It's only a dystopia when white men are suffering
Batman is the quintessential example
Game of Thrones
Westworld
The 100

Sometimes there's a middle ground between grimdark and hopepunk, ymmv:
Killjoys
Imperial Radch

Hopepunk: the opposite of grimdark
Thor Ragnarok
Mad Max Fury Road
My Chemical Romance - Danger Days: The True Lives of the Fabulous Killjoys
Tank Girl
Janelle Monae’s Dirty Computer
New Star Wars?
The Holographic Principle-Epica
Saga (comic, TBD, not yet complete)
The True Meaning of Smekday
Medium.com article on Star Trek's economy
Studies on univeral basic income
Solarpunk! Lots of Tumblrs. Start with solarpunkprincess
- Sun Vault anthology
- Story "Water Into Wine" by Joyce Chng
Search Google or AO3 for "commune" or other types of co-housing for intentional communities
"A Day in the Life of Everything" KS
Hvellur (Icelandic documentary)
Octavia Butler's Dawn series
Yuri on Ice as a hopepunk AU of actual Russia/skating
Afrofuturism has been dealing with these issues for a long time - see the resources from zvi’s panel
Mars Evacuees (book?)
Space Opera (book)
Star Trek
Always Coming Home - Ursula K. Le Guin
The Ohlone Way (book)
In Another Land (book)
Leverage
Discworld

Your mods were very tired, so please comment with anything we forgot and your recs for any other media that sustains you during these grimdark times!

Bring Your Fandom to Work expertise sharing

Hey all!

I promised I'd make a post where people could offer to be sounding boards for fic about their jobs or hobbies, and this is it!

( Here are some notes from the panel itself )

I'll start us off: If you have questions about college radio or comic & game stores, lmk! I'm @corbae on Twitter and most other places.

Zines panel!

I am running a panel on zines at this year's con.txt - 11:30 Saturday!

What I would like to do is have us actually assemble a souvenir mini-zine using pre-internet techniques as part of the panel.

To do this, I need content.

If any current or former con.txt attendee would like to donate a 100-word slash-related drabble (or 100-word meta short), any pairing, any fandom (or original slash), new or reprint, to go in the zine, that would make my day!

Leave them in comments here by July 20th or drop them at this username @ yahoo . com along with the name you'd like to be credited by.

I have no idea what the print run will be (it will be small), so I can't promise contributor copies, but we will try to have one for every panel attendee, a couple for the orphans' table, and one for the U of Iowa zine archive.

(Also, if you were around in the heyday of zines, and would like to contribute to the panel in other ways, that would be super-great - I know more about non-fandom zine culture than I do about fandom ones.)

(And if you have any zines you'd like to dispose of, I will be sending a couple boxes of mixed zines to U of Iowa after the con as a donation from con-txt; feel free to bring zines to the con to add to that pile.)

Feel free to link this around to other places where you know con-txt denizens or zine lovers dwell!

Harry Potter Recs

Here are the recs from the Harry Potter panel at #contxt2016. We're missing a few (at the end) so if anyone has links, please provide them! Thanks!

Fic/Series:
Amateur Cartography by worksofstone
The Boy Who Only Lived Twice by lettered (secret identity)
Collared by KateKintail (sorry, self-rec, but someone mentioned werewolf culture fics so...)
Crossing Lines by Ren (solving mystery on train)
Dose of Your Own by OurLoveIsForever (Draco/Astoria)
Drink Up Thy Zider: A South Hams Pomona by wemyss
Golden Age by zeitgeistic (faire_weather) (Hufflepuffs save the world!)
Hogwarts: A (Marvelous) History, or: Thor and Loki's Excellent Adventure by altilis (Marvel/HP crossover with Thor as Godric Gryffindor and Loki as Salazar Slytherin)
Like None Other verse by aspeninthesunlight
A Little More Time by Jess Pallas (Teddy travels back in time and rescues Remus & Tonks)
Little Red Courgette by blamebrampton
The Maddest House by busaikko (also available in podfic)
Momenti Diversi by zarah5
The Pure and Simple Truth by lettered
Seven Days in June Series by fourth_rose (Draco is a tour guide in Vienna)
The Shoebox Project by Lady Jaida and Rave (AMAZING Marauders collab with art)
StealingHarryverse by copperbadge (Stealing Harry, Laocoon's Children, etc.)
Tale of a Time Long Gone by Star of the North (epic awesome Foundersfic)
Theft of Assets, Destruction of Property by Helenish
Turn by Sara's Girl (soooooooo good)
Two Lockets by ac1d6urn (Acid), Sinick (Good magical realism)

Anything by These Authors:
Anything by ac1d6urn
Anything by Azoth
Anything by dicta_contrion
Anything by Sinick

Pairing-specific:
Harry/Draco memory fics (Some memory charm fics in general)
Dudley/Millicent fics
Remus/Sirius/Tonks exists!

Fanvids:
The Adventure (Neville-centric)

Communities/Blogs/Misc:
DADA's Recs List
The Harry Potter Daisy Chain of Awesome- crazy random pairings
Harry Potter et. al. May Madness- pr0n fest every May
How Wizards Do Money- TheBillfold.com
ink-splotch Tumblr
The Wotcher Wolfstar reclist OF DOOM!

Podfic/Podcasts:
My Immortal read by Wizard Rocker Tianna and the Cliffhangers aka I Speak Tree (laughed so hard I cried)
The Maddest House Series read by busaikko, greeniron
The Maddest House read by randomicicle
PotterFicWeekly (is the best!)

Wrock:
Astoria Greengrass and the Pure-Blood Prince by Swish & Flick (and anything by them)
Nobody Expects the Blibbering Humdingers by the Blibbering Humdingers
The Prince's Tale by Lauren Fairweather
Songs from Beedle the Bard by the Butterbeer Experience
We Are Magic by Tonks and the Aurors

Need Links For:
A Secret Chord, Part One: The Minor Fall by a-merry-chase (gone from LJ)
Maybe stuff by theregoesmygun (deleted from LJ)
Square Pegs by violet_quill (also gone from LJ)

(no subject)

I posted a friending meme over at

contxt_unofficial, if anybody's here and not there. Come play, whether you were at the con this year or not! I heard so many people wishing for more lj-style discussion again.

Videos shown at Takarazuka panel and room party

So I showed a bunch of Takarazuka (all-female Japanese musicals) @con-txt and I promised people I’d give them a rundown online so they can explore more. Here it is!

“Guys and Dolls” from the 2002 Moon Troupe aka Tsukigumi production starring Shibuki Jun
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=vwqU4TARyPw

The TI Project sampler disk (http://ti-project.livejournal.com/19814.html) skipping Quiz Hexagon, The Flower Halftime Show, The Lovers’ Suicide, Tale of Two Cities and Phantom.

Cocktail (http://ti-project.livejournal.com/38752.html) skipping the Tequila basketball number.

This tango number to Libertango starring Yoka Wao and Hanafusa Mari https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=euBei_vd5L8

Hikari to Kage from Legend of the Galactic Heroes, aka the “Let me dubcon you into accepting my fealty and also my glowing prosthetic eye” number. (No, seriously, it’s amazing, watch it.) http://amuseoffyre.tumblr.com/post/58527774294/yukinojou-drcalvin-hikari-to-kage-yuumi

Yami ga Hirogaru (the “Let me seduce you, young prince, I am male but Death and therefore this isn’t gay, but it totally is” number) from, I believe but am not sure, the 1996 Star Troupe aka Hoshigumi production of Elisabeth https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=KcE8cN4OXbo

(Note: Sorry to everyone who made awesome suggestions that I didn’t use this time. I haven’t been able to find the clips you suggested, but I’ll keep looking!)

Comics 101

I'm running a comics 101 panel.

What would you want to know if you were just getting into comics? If you're in comics, what do you wish someone had told you early on?

Do you have any recommendations for great comics to read if you are into [tv show], [movie], or [book]?

Con.txt Asexuality Roundtable resource post

At Con.txt, I moderated the Asexuality Roundtable panel (which had 10 to 20 people attending, much better than I expected for the last panel on the last day, especially when scheduled against the hockeyfic panel), and promised a resource post.

I've posted it here at my Dreamwidth.

Hey, remember this community?

Hiiiiiiiiiii, just thought I'd drop this in here...

Bi-invisible? Non-monosexual Representation in Fandom panel write up and resources, from CON.TXT 2014!

Please feel free to continue discussions in the comments!

11 minutes of CON.TXT

Info-rec!!! Check out SlashCast episode 32! The slashers-on-the-street segment this month is from CON.TXT. Whee! It starts at 59:45 or so (in a 2-hour episode). The rest of episode is great, of course - the focus this month is on RPF fandoms.

In vague order of who you hear:

treewishes

shoshanna

sanj

cjandre

dorinda

cordelia_v

insptr_penguin

shoshanna

dorinda

synecdochic

sanj
? (help? it was dark? I was drinking?)

cinco
? (maybe

v_greyson? but - terrible notes, terrible)

penguingal

jackette
rebecca

niamhcat
dorinda, shoshanna, treewishes (again)

luciazephyr

grenegome
dorinda (yes, again, what? She was very meta.)

brak666

Unintentionally (as there was no plan whatsoever, duh),

escapade_con ,

connexions,

muskratjamboree, and

tribalforces are all mentioned here - but not

lubricus, which is coming up in just a few weeks. Anyway... yay slash cons!

Panel Report: The Phylogeny of Speculate Erotica

The Phylogeny of Speculate Erotica. Complete with

melannen's notes and a very silly bonus slideshow.

For those who'd like to see my Queen of Swords femslash vid again.

Especially since on a small screen, the problems with the resolution don't appear. People were very understanding about that, I'm happy to say, which is good, because the series has never been released on dvd in the US, and I only recently found out that it has in Europe. Anyway, a couple of people remarked that they figured the footage was hard to get in a better format, which it is.

Anyway, my roommate (both at the con and in real life) says my link to the info page I made about the fandom didn't make it clear enough, so:

The Queen of Swords femslash fanvid.

Con.txt panel report: Sherlock vs. Sherlock

Or, as we came up with too late to change the program, "What Makes a House A Holmes?"

This is going to be a fairly short panel report, since when I mod a panel, my public-speaking persona goes on read-only memory as a self-defense mechanism, but I want a place for people to share and continue the discussion.

And also to add the most important thing: I mentioned Lord Peter Wimsey as a canon that has a Holmes cameo, and others in the panel were incredulous about this, and as some of them ought to know Lord Peter canon better than I, I assumed I'd misremembered something.

No, I was right! It was written for BBC Radio by Dorothy Sayers to be read during the program "A Tribute to Sherlock Holmes on the Occasion of his 100th Birthday", and broadcast on 8 January 1954. The text of the story was published in the book "Sayers on Holmes", (but does not appear to be in any of the "Complete Lord Peter" compilations).

mayhap was kind enough to post it full-text online a few years back, which is probably how I saw it: DLS does crack; or, The Young Lord Peter Consults Sherlock Holmes. It is a very short story, telling the tale of a very young Lord Peter going to consult Holmes about a matter of a small black kitten which has gone missing. (spoiler: (skip) But don't worry, Holmes saves the day and the kitten is perfectly okay.)

So Lord Peter gets to go on the list of official Sherlock Holmes-related canons after all. :P

We spent the beginning of the panel discussing these many canons, which ones we liked, and which ones only arguably belong on the list. There was also quite a bit of discussion of pre-internet Holmes fandom, especially the more "male-dominated" parts that concentrated more on things like timelines than on Holmes and Watson's epic romance, but also that there has been Holmes/Watson porn being written for over a century, and also how Holmes fandom as an umbrella has changed over time and incorporated all of the new adaptations and theories and media (both for published works and for fandom.)

Unfortunately, I have no notes for this part, so instead, I invite people (whether participants in the panel or not!) to share anything they want about their favorite Holmes-related small fandoms (other than BBC Sherlock and the ACD stories) in the comments to this post, and also any links they have to fics that were mentioned in the panel or that you would like to recommend in small Holmes-related fandoms.

Most of the rest of the panel was spent discussing what it is that makes a canon a Holmes pastiche or homage instead of just being a detective story, and what are the essential elements of the Holmes character.

Here's the list I generated from memory after the panel, in rough order of importance as we voted by show-of-hands:

( What Makes a House A Holmes )

Resources from the Ereader panel!

Greetings! I've posted a roundup of resources and info from the Ereader panel.

We'd love to hear from anyone with examples of how they use their ereaders for fic or organization, or any additional resources, comments, or questions!

Notes on the Avengers Fans Assemble! Panel

I've written up notes on my talking points and memories from the Saturday morning Avengers panel over in my journal. I'd love it if anyone else who was there could add on their recollections of what all we talked about.

Con.txt panel report #1: Avengers Fans Assemble!

I'll be posting write-ups of the other panels I modded as well within the next couple of days, and I'll post links to them here when that happens.

2012

It was great fun. My roomies were fab!!! I loved the consuite so very much, it's a wonderful meeting up and hanging out area. Thanks to all who put this on for us!

How I Made Art Show Things

I was going to just post a photo, but this got out of hand, so here is a photo and and ad-hoc how-too on the QUILTBAG quilt bag I put in the art auction this year.

This is set up with headers and nested cuts, because yeah, it got kind of long...

QUILTBAG quilt bag

( largish QUILTBAG photo under cut )

The picture is kind of shoddy because I didn't get around to taking one until about five minutes before the auction started. Sorry!

( About the design )

No, I did not actually have a pattern when I started. Appearances aside, there is still no pattern.

( Why it happened )

I am actually considering making a couple more of these, and putting them up on my lonely etsy account or something - it took about ten hours to make the first one, not counting going through stash, and if they'd sell for even half what the con.txt one did, it would almost be worth the labor, as long as I was just burning through stash. Maybe I'll at least make one for myself.

Anyway, no there is no pattern, but here's some fairly extensive notes on how I made it, if anybody wants to try their own and wants something to start from other than just eight letters:

( Notes on how to make a quiltbag )

Daleklings

( photo of baby dalek under cut )
Oh and hey, while I'm at it, two years ago I put in the tiny crocheted daleklings, which you may remember, and promised people I'd finish double-checking the pattern and post it?

Ahaha. The problem is that every time I do one, I figure out a better way to do something, so I've never managed to get all the way through the pattern without alteration in order to proofread it. But since that will apparently never happen, I might as well throw up the most recent version, with a caveat that quality is not guaranteed, and that I do not speak crochet notation fluently.

If anybody would like to try to turn this into a real pattern, feel free! And if you try it and get stuck, PM me and I will try to help, offer has no time limit.

( Dalekling pattern )

All of the above placed by melannen under a Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 3.0 Unported License. Fly free, my pretties.

Also:

For those who were interested in finding out more about the Queen of Swords series (the source material for the female Zorro femslash vid that premiered at the con), I've created a fanpage with links to the eps on youtube and other stuff. I do hope I can get more people on the Tessa/Marta ship!