Thoughts on EasterCon 2023
Good evening!
So, you might have noticed that I've not been publishing much this week - I'm visiting some friends and looking into moving house, so I'm spinning a few plates while resting and recovering from EasterCon. I'm pretty wrecked still, but I'm getting back on top of things.
I'm just gonna link the new thing I have written this week, which is a piece of comedic creative nonfiction about my friends' cats, my beloved niece and nephew, Kira and Bercow.
Creative Nonfiction: Uncling Duties
A selection of conversations with my friends’ cats.
It’s spring, and before returning home to Galway, I’m staying with some very good friends, L & T, for a few days. This means time with their cats, too.
On Patreon / / On Medium
Also, if you desire a direct media rec for tonight other than EasterCon recs, we're currently watching The Nice Guys (2016, dir. Shane Black), and that's a favourite of mine, always worth a watch if you've not seen it before.
Anyway, to go through what happened at EasterCon!
The virtual programme for EasterCon has now been entirely uploaded, so if you'd like to access it, click here.
On the Friday, Lewis and I came up from Bristol to Birmingham coach station - we were staying at the Premier Inn rather than at the Hilton Hotel itself, so we ended up walking over, but the Hilton Metropole is near to the NEC and the NEC road was blocked off. The first day we walked to the hotel via the roundabouts, which took like forty minutes - when we walked back, we found the way through the NEC.
This was our first EasterCon, so we spent a little while figuring out where everything and looking through the map and so on.
Firstly, I was on the Queer Pirates panel on the Friday, moderated by Kate Heartfield, and with Ryann Fletcher, F.D. Lee, and Juliet Kemp. Unfortunately, the catch-up of this panel got eaten by tech gremlins, so they've not been able to upload it, but I'm pretty sure all the panels I attended and am about to recommend and gush about were!
What I can give you is this list of pirate media recommendations, which I put together ahead of the panel. It was a fun time all around - we discussed the themes of layered identity and authenticity in pirate media, most particularly in Our Flag Means Death and Black Sails, and how myth and legend intersect with history, and what they mean for like, the truth and realness of someone's identity, especially as a queer person. We talked a lot about the margins of queer history and how a lot of pirate media feels like a reclamation of our real stories, because queerness has been so overwritten and so intentionally forgotten over time.
I just sort of gushed about Izzy, as I am wont to do, and we talked a bit about what we'd like to see in S2 of OFMD - in general, the panel was hungry for more lesbian rep in S2, which I'm hoping we'll see too, and I particularly mentioned that I would love to see Anne Bonny and Mary Read interpreted with Mark Read's transmasculinity as a central aspect, especially because we've already met Calico Jack.
On the Saturday morning, Lewis went along to SF, ethics and science panel, which they said they really enjoyed and found super interesting!
We then both popped along to Isolation Horror: Small Town Shivers, which was a super interesting panel, and I especially loved hearing Hildur Knútsdóttir's perspective as someone who writes and plays with a lot of isolationist horror concepts in Iceland - she's got a new novella called The Night Guest being released in English, set in Reyjavik! I made a lot of notes for myself on the panel, and I have to admit like...
So for me, folk horror is so often about fear of the unknown, and subsequently it frequently draws on xenophobic tropes and effectively fear of unknown cultures. A point was made on the panel that a lot of fear in isolation horror is to do with being the only person who's outside of an in-group, and subsequently cannot follow their communications or their media, and are targeted by that group.
Some folk horror really hits me, because the thing is like--
It was really interesting hearing Hildur Knútsdóttir's perspective, because she talked at length about how isolated Iceland is: cut off from the majority of Europe without sufficient farmland or fishery to support the whole of its population without access to the global markets. Moreover, Iceland basically has one big cable that runs on the sea floor to supply the island with its internet - if it's impacted, then the whole island is cut off from the rest of the world. There's also just how everybody knows one another because it's a small population, and everyone clocks differences rapidly, you know?
A point was made on the panel that in the city, if you do something bizarre and freakish, none of the people around you are likely to ever see you again, because there's simply so many of you, and so many bizarre people will be making an impact on you that perhaps that one bizarre thing won't even stand out in the scheme of things.
In a far more isolated community where everyone knows each other, you don't get to use the anonymity of a crowd - there is no crowd of blank faces you can blend into.
I really liked that point and that perspective, but like... I think what bothers me personally about a lot of exactly this horror is that it's some posh idiot from the city who goes into the middle of nowhere and tends to ascribe creepiness or horror or simply some sort of incomprehensible power to something that's literally just normal.
One of the panellists mentioned that someone had bought a wood nearby their home, and that because some local witches did their coven activities there, there were loads of animal skulls. The implication was, "Aaaah!!" but I just...
I mean, I've seen the websites those witches buy their animal skulls on. Those skulls are perfectly clean, often washed in something aciditic to bleach all the flesh off the bones, and because a lot of these people care a lot about ethical sourcing, they either use skulls from animals they've trapped or hunted for meat, or - and this seems far more common - they just take bones and skulls from already dead animals they find in the woods.
There's nothing frightening about it to me when you know a lot of these people like using animal remains for the aesthetic, when they're often carefully sourced, and they're, you know, packed in bubblewrap and sent by mail and then placed carefully around to maximise their visual effect.
The reason it's not frightening to me is because there's no mystery to it.
And that's what's funny about some isolation horror - what some people rely on is the idea that this strange, insular community which has its own rules and regulations is entirely incomprehensible to an outsider, and that that's bad and evil, because if I can't instantly comprehend an in-group's values and behaviours and approve or disapprove of them, they must be evil.
Part of it is hostility and fear of a foreign culture and an assumption that insularity must be suspicious and potentially harmful - part of it is straight up a lack of imagination.
When some people stumble upon arcane patterns carved into trees or rocks, symbols and patterns they've never seen before, strange markers that seem to be placed according to rules they don't know, for reasons they don't know, they're freaked out by it. They immediately assume and ascribe such things to bizarre and dangerous rituals by bizarre and dangerous people.
Could be.
But also, you know. People do this shit for fun. Teenagers, for example. Or, you know, a coven of local goths who love the aesthetic and hang out.
To see something foreign and strange and immediately ascribe malice or suspicious intent to it is a pretty unpleasant notion, in my mind. Some isolation horror really works for me and some really doesn't, and having attended this panel and listened to everyone talk it through, like, I think that made it click for me?
If it's about the social things, I think I'm far more likely to be compelled by stuff that's written by insiders to the culture who understand or semi-understand the situation, or just stories that have nothing to do with the social aspect, and are far more about the physical and actual isolation. I don't think it ever clicked for me exactly why so much of this stuff feels flat for me even though some of it really hits me in a way I love.
Later, we headed along to Alternatives to Currency, which was interesting, actually - Stew Hotson was on this panel, and basically everything that came out of his mouth I disagreed with, which is always so much fun. In general, like, this was a panel so richly packed with interesting and distinct perspectives, and it was great seeing the debate and the disagreements unfold between people, you know?
I love to see panels where people are going for similar things from different angles, but discussions like this can be great and so creative too, because obviously when people are disagreeing you get to see their respective biases and differing expectations.
On the panel, people were generally discussing what currency is and different definitions of currency, and then discussing what can serve in place of economic currency like paper and coins, whether that means trading time and expertise and skill, tracking debt and obligation, forms of social currency or standing, and so on. Gillian Pollack, who is fucking ace, had so much good shit to say about historical perspectives on value and input in a community, and that was class.
Later in the evening was , which was ace - Chris McCartney and Susie Williamson were on the panel, and it was being moderated by SJ / Sarah Groenewegen. Roz Kaveney was also on the panel, and because she's a fucking legend, she showed up like twenty minutes late because she had a nap and didn't set an alarm, but despite coming in halfway through, everything she said was as excellent as you would expect.
Anyway, the panel was interesting - the premise of the panel was effectively to address the limitations of simple representation in queer media, and what more could (or should?) be done in and around the issues of queer liberation. Everyone on the panel obviously had a subtly different perspective, and it's such a complex discussion to be had.
Obviously, I write a lot myself about representation and the value thereof, but while I write a lot of work that people find rep in, I'm not always comfortable with my work being boiled down to exclusively representation - and for that matter, whether my work is good rep or not, I don't consider it activism.
Representation isn't enough, at the end of the day, especially when so much of the time the goal is to get representations of queer identities in front of the cishet masses - and in doing so, only the less "extreme" aspects of queerness are represented, made to assimilate. Real queer people, messy and freaky and kinky and weird and vitally important, are unlikely to make it to those audiences, and if they do they're nitpicked to fuck.
So! Yeah!
On the Sunday morning we were both wrecked and slept in for a bit - until 10:30am, that was, when came one of my favourite panels of the weekend: Be Gay, Do Crime: The “Magneto Was Right” Panel. More of Roz and Chris - his first time moderating - and then Troo, Zoe Burgess-Foreman, and Aliette de Bodard. It was a really great panel, hearing about people's different perspectives on queer villainy and the way that queerness so often means people are forced into the villainous role even if they're not truly unkind or mean-spirited.
There was so much discussion of queercoding versus explicit queer dynamics, of queer costuming and design and how important it is to see, of differing queer identities and how they're treated on screen, including different ways they're villanized, and also just... People's favourite villains and villainous perspectives.
Lewis went along at this time to Alien Ecology, which he enjoyed far more than I enjoyed Non-European Middle Ages, which I'll be honest, pissed me off. Gillian Polack was a dazzling star, as ever, love that woman, and I always adore seeing Cheryl Morgan's perspectives on so many panels, she's always incredibly knowledgeable and has such a great and balanced perspective. Oghenechovwe Ekpeki was on the panel too, and while he had a few tech issues streaming in, him and Gillian both added so fucking much and dug into the flawed cultural biases of a lot of these discussions, and how they're based in like, the most basic things that people assume are universal when they're not.
Unfortunately, a lot of the time of the panel was taken up by waffling from another panellist, including some frankly gross antisemitic shit that didn't need to be there at all, and also on circular discussion of what exactly constitutes "Middle Ages". With panels like these, it's sometimes frustrating when the discussion gets stuck on something that has no correct answer rather than topics that can be more constructively discussed. While most of these panels I absolutely recommend going and watching on catch-up in their entirety, you can probably just fastforward much of this one.
And finally, on the Sunday, we headed along to Forbidden Hues: Sumptuary Law in History and Fiction, which was super fucking great. Gillian Polack again, Nicholas Jackson, and Angeli Primlani. It was just aces to hear these panellists just rattle of example after example of some really interesting sumptuary law and restrictive practice around fashions and materials, why and how these laws were enforced in different places, and so on - I'm super looking forward to hopefully seeing some more fashion history panels at next year's EasterCon and maybe at WorldCon, because I fucking love that shit, and these three all had such great perspectives.
I will say that it was beyond disappointing that Angeli Primlani was not treated with due respect on the panel, not being given as much time to speak as Gillian and Nicholas and being skipped over to answer some questions, including several times the moderator mispronouncing her name - it was just shitty to see and just a really awful way to treat anybody but particularly a panellist, and I'm hoping that at future conventions more moderators are gonna undergo some bias training or just not moderate panels if they can't be fair and respectful to all panelists.
I also wanted to shout out Diana's Stellar Wire Works - she mentioned not being super active on social media, but I bought an honestly gorgeous kilt pin with several hanging charms, and she also made one of her charms into a fish hook earring right in front of me so I could buy it to wear. She's got a gorgeous selection of pieces available, and I can't recommend enough checking out her works if you can do! I'm always a slut for nerdy and specialist jewellery pieces.
A lot of people have critiqued EasterCon 2023 for its handling of Covid policy, and I entirely understand that - Lewis and I have been lucky to come out of it testing negative and unaffected, but it was really noticeable moving through the convention how many people were not masking up within panel rooms, even though it was part of the con's policy to mask if people were able. Obviously any larger in-person gathering comes with attendant risk, but I'm glad to see several cons talking about adjusting Covid policy, getting hold of HEPA filters, and so on to ensure a greater safety. I also think that although it's sad that the queer pirates panel and a few other bits and pieces weren't able to be completely streamed and backed up in the course of the weekend, like...
This EasterCon was such an incredibly ambitious hybrid convention, and throughout, I was really astounded by how smooth and easy the hybrid aspects were to access, how great and cleanly run and organised the convention discord was, how helpful people were, and so on. In general, I think the Conversation 2023 team did fucking stellar work, and I'm so glad I went along to the convention. Hoping it's the first of many more for me!
My next planned convention is BristolCon 2023, and then obviously in 2024 it's EasterCon again, then WorldCon in Glasgow.
Anyway, see you all next week! With some fresh fiction and especially some porn this time.