I went to geek girl con this weekend

[wickedwords]

Fun experience, and more like DragonCon , SF-ish cons, and gaming cons I've been to than media cons. I only stayed for the day, and most of it was taken up in prep for the panel I was on (Geek Elders Speak), the panel itself, questions after, and lunch.

The one panel that I really wanted to attend was the data statistics one, which was of course scheduled at the same time as the one I was on. So that was a disappointment, but I'll find the slides and enjoy looking through the data myself.

My panel tried to cram too many people and too many different things into a single hour: pro writers and fan fictions, what early zines were like, costuming in the early days, the first conventions, early star wars fandom, etc, etc, etc. My own subject areas were slash and vidding, and I really didn't have enough time to go into details. I did a brief history of vidding as we had slides taken from 'Pressure', but you know I can do an hour on that itself. And of course everyone asks the 'why slash and not femslash' question, and it takes awhile to go through my opinion on how that came to be, along with discussion of the way slash fandom started out as simply 'The Premise', and grew to what it is today.

Mostly I wanted a lot more time. Not for my other panelists, of course. I wanted that time for me. :)

I also need to refresh my femslash history, as I got a couple of questions on that. I mentioned that I heard of some in Star Trek, and thought that Blake's 7 had some femslash stories early on, only to be met with a 'Blake's 7? I've never heard of that. I guess I should research it' type of response.

History outreach, man. We gotta do more outreach.

It was fun, but as I said, I needed more time. It did make me excited for Escapade.

If you are interested in being a part of the Geek Elders Speak anthology about the influence of women in fandom from 1950-1985, you can connect with Jenni (one of my co-panelists) for details here:

forestpathbooks.com/geekeldersspeak/

Comments

[copracat]

I am sort of chuffed that I don't make it into the geek elders time frame. I've been feeling a bit old recently because I've seen a few people refer to the mid-2000s as the old days. Sprightly, that's me!

:D :D :D

Also this is a very keen sounding anthology.

[cathexys]

I just saw the call for this anthology ye4sterday and checked out Geekgirlcon and had the same feeling you described re DragonCon vs Mediacons... (It started as an offshoot of SDCC so that makes sense, I guess.

Go you, elder, and I hear you on never having enough time. (personally, I want to hear you speak for an hour on Pressure!!! :)

I too want to hear about the statistics panel. I think Franzi was on that? I'm sure she'll share all her findings!!!

[wickedwords]

I've never been to a comic con, but I think that's the right fit from what I experienced. The data stats and the fan elders ones were the only ones that were fan fic oriented in any way, and I really think they need more of those panels. If it's a reaction to SDCC, that would explain why fan fic fandom isn't as well represented as it should be.

1) Media fandom was already mostly women, and independent of the comic con world. So since fan fiction wasn't a part of comic con, it didn't come over as part of what needed to be included in panels/discussions.
2) Writing isn't part of STEM, and that's a lot of the focus of the con
2) lingering feelings of fan fic being a bit wrong in the eyes of creators

Sidebar to that last bit as We didn't talk about this part on the panel: one of the pro panelists was a bit freaked about being outed as a fan fic writer by a pro who is out about being a fan fic writer. The panel at the con was the first time she admitted in public that she'd written fan fic, and part of her choice to do that was based on the understanding that the place that fan fiction occupies now is a lot different than the place it occupied when she first started writing.

So, yes, more public, more visible, and time to claim the past. It's very empowering.

[wickedwords]

I barely make the cutoff as I say I came in with the Mac computer in 1984. :) I don't think I wrote until 1987 -- Star Trek TNG on a Mac 512 -- but Sandy got one of those first Macs and she's the one that gave me my first photocopied zines to read, so gotta be that same timeframe.

[franzeska]

B7 is super not actually known by younger fans, even ones who've watched old Who, S&H, etc.

I'm posting some little history things on tumblr (today's being about Age of Sail and what sort of perverts would name themselves after writers who put in kinky whipping scenes lalala), and the B7 post definitely got the most "What is that???" reactions.