(no subject)

[darchildre]

This morning, there was a marathon between me and the con hotel, which was interesting. Fortunately, there were places to cross and people to help one do so, because otherwise I would have been afraid of being trampled.

The first panel I went to today was on Body Language in Online Interactions and was fascinating. All about how different online media and platforms and tools change the way one uses language and how that bleeds over to the way one speaks/presents in other contexts. I found the discussion of the methods of communication that we carry over from online conversations to offline conversations particularly interesting - one panelist talked about how sometimes she makes an asterisk gesture with her hand (flashing all five fingers, basically) to mark a footnote, or thought she wants to return to once she's done with the main thought; another talked about how she wished she could use tags in offline conversations in the same metacommentary way they're used online; an audience member talked about how she's incorporated \o/ into her physical body language. I had picked this panel sort of at random out of two or three that I was waffling between during this time slot and I'm really glad I ended up at this one because it was really nifty.

After lunch, I went to Religion in Hard Scifi. Which...okay, I'll admit that I mostly went to get book recommendations. It was mostly interesting, though inevitably rather Judeo-Christian centric - the panel was two agnostics, an atheist, and a Jewish woman, all of whom had been raised in Christian churches. So. There was a bit where the consequences of alien contact on religious people was discussed and one of the panelists kept talking about how mankind is "created in God's own image" and how finding other sentient life would totally fuck with that sort of geocentric viewpoint. Which, yes, I'm sure that it would but not all religious people think that people were in fact made in God's image. I mean, I don't, particularly. The idea of a singular omnipotent God was rather assumed by the panel, which I found a bit irritating but didn't really want to have to talk about it, so I let it slide. (One of the panelists was rather condescending, also, and at one point set rationality and religiousness as opposites. Which, annoying. Surprisingly, this was not the atheist.) Still, it was interesting and I got some book titles out of it.

Then the Fringe panel! Which was Olivia Dunham: How is She So Awesome? The answer is: Olivia Dunham is molecularly composed of awesome. This panel was full of smart people saying very smart things about Fringe and Olivia and Astrid (and Peter and Walter). We talked about the differences between all of the Olivias we've seen so far, about how much we love Olivia's relationship with Ella, how Fringe allows women to be angry and doesn't undercut that anger or show that it's wrong, how much we want an Astrid-centric episode next season, about the presentation of Walter as a person with disabilities, and other things that I am momentarily blanking on. We ran out of time before we could talk much about Nina, except that she is awesome also. Now I kinda want to rewatch (almost) all of Fringe. (Maybe I would skip the John Scott episodes...)

Lastly, I went to the Fail panel, which was about various of the huge internet fandom Fails, how they happen and escalate and how one can do better and prevent them from happening, if one finds one's self in such a situation. I don't comment on Fails but I try to follow them because I think it's important to be informed and to take responsibility to educate myself so that I screw up as little as possible. So this was an interesting panel and one that I need to think more about.

And then I found a grocery store and bought chicken and apples and ice cream and have been consuming these things in a leisurely fashion throughout the evening while knitting and watching things on my laptop. Which is pretty excellent.