Readercon

THANKS AGAIN to skogkatt and Moss for letting me stay with them and buying me lunch when my finances were low and listening to me stress on Friday night.  These things are huge to me.

ALSO HUGE TO ME in ways I am not quite sure I fully understand yet; Daniel Jose Older did quite a few readings that YOU ARE UNHAPPY IF YOU MISSED, and I am very happy I caught.  When the paycheck rolls in, I am putting some cash aside... WAIT I HAVE AMAZON POINTS!  Okay, anyway, I am buying Salsa Nocturna, and you should too.  I am because Gordo.  He's a fat bastard who has the same relationship with his body that I do, the same relationship with children that I do (they can tell me from a sucker on sight, and perhaps, even around a corner or two), and a suspiciously similar inner voice.  I doubt I am the person he had in mind when he wrote Gordo, seeing as how Gordo is Cuban and I am a pale and northerly shade of white people, BUT.
I always had the notion that I was all kinds of represented in media, cishet, able-bodied white dude, that I am, and that my failure to connect with characters that fall into those categories was on me.  And it's true, I can't dispute.  But listening to Gordo mixing his BP meds with bacon for balance, answering the childrens' questions of how he got so fat (BY EATING CHILDREN), holy shit, did my heart kick up a little (and I checked to make sure it wasn't THE BIG ONE) - culture not withstanding, I saw myself in Gordo, and it meant a fucking lot to me.  I know Gordo is not for me, but I am for Gordo.
I want to write protagonists for people who don't have many, or any, and I have for a while.  My dearest wish for "Live Arcade" is that some gamer kid who feels weird with gender roles assigned at birth reads the story and bonds with the Kid.  I want my next story... well, I won't spoil.  I wanted stories (along with others, I don't expect anyone to identify with a Byronic aristo-astronaut) like that because it looked like a good goal to shoot for to make me better at this silly hobby in which I tend to engage.  But I don't think I understood exactly how much it meant.  I probably don't, still, but I know how much it means to me, and that's amazing.

I NEED TO CALL MY DAD and thank him for the Christmas gift of 2010 that I just finally unboxed - a GPS, which was, in many ways, the hero of my Readercon, guiding me to and from the con itself, shadesong 's house, skogkatt 's house, Elayna's school and all.  I resisted the damned things for a long time (which is extremely foolish, given my abysmal sense of direction), but I have given up my pride and accepted that I live in an electronically assisted world.

THE GENDER NEUTRAL RESTROOM in the consuite was a nice touch.  The sparkly lanyards were a good idea.  I'm glad to see these things.