Sock It to Me

WorldCon was fun! A lot of the things I was stressed about were things that turned out to be totally okay, and I think the con comm and the venue both did a great job of setting things up for people with disabilities, although I do want to send some feedback about a couple things if I can figure out where. I definitely overextended myself in terms of trying to make it to panels and events and meet up with friends, considering I'd limited my attendance to just Friday and Saturday. But I got to meet up with Caroline Stevermer and a very old friend of mine named Tim, as well as mecurtin and seekingferret and of course wickedwords, and mizmak ventured over the mountains to meet up with Caroline, which meant we also got to spend time with her (not at the con), so it was like having some of the Media Cannibals gang back together. And I ran into kormantic while she was minding a table in the dealers' room.

Of course, there's never enough time to really spend with people at a convention, and WorldCon is ginormous so it seems even harder to get together with them (probably easier if you're staying in one of the hotels). I was intending to go to dinner with mecurtin, but somehow, standing in line at the restaurant, this overwhelming fatigue came over me (more than my usual incredible fatigue) and I ended up having to bug out. (I'll spare you my Lyft nightmare story but suffice to say there was definitely some time there where I thought it's a really good thing I don't carry deadly weapons on me.) Fortunately, she was generous enough to come over to my part of town to have lunch with me Tuesday, which was awesome.

My biggest problem was that I was constantly overheating because of my chemo drugs, which make me insanely sensitive to heat, and so I was always ducking into the gender neutral restrooms to mop at all the sweat drenching me. What an unbelievable drag on your fun that is, to just have water dripping down you and being damp all the time (moist, the most hated word), it's just so fucking awful. I did find myself, in all the panels about writing and such, kind of thinking more about the final chapter of my Bucky and Steve in a virtual world WIP, and I think I'm at a point where I can really tackle it finally. (Of course, as I've said previously, every time I'm ready to try to write, I manifest work, and sure enough...I manifested a proofread that arrived today. Clearly I should not be allowed to possess this power, and I would love it if someone else would harness the power instead.)

The new Summit convention center building is light years better than the original convention center, which was built in the late '70s/early '80s. We haven't had any real rain for months here, so of course it rained hard on Friday, but at least most people weren't given only rain as their Seattle experience, since it cleared up by Friday night. I would have loved to attend the masquerade, as that's my favorite event, Friday night, but I watched it streaming and it's just...not the same, you know? It was fine, but it just doesn't compare to being able to really see the cosplayers on stage and get the full range of what they're doing. I've heard there's some whining about the Hugos, as usual, but I didn't watch that.

Highlights were definitely hearing marthawells reading from Queen Demon and the (May 2026) new Murderbot Diaries book Platform Decay, as well as her Q&As, and a really cool panel on queer representation in SF that included Matt Baume, whose videos I watch a lot where he discusses the history of queer people in TV and movies. There was also a neat panel on dystopian fiction that looked at how in the global south, it's not future fiction, it's been part of their lives for a long time, which unfortunately I couldn't stay for the whole thing for because I was sweating so bad and the room was packed and just...ugh. But what I did hear was great.

I also literally ran into Martha Wells in the art show--I totally thought she'd be surrounded by a phalanx of security or something, so I was all awkward and stupid and just like completely blanked-out on what to say and I'm sure I came across as a total moron. But I knew going in I wouldn't be able to handle anything like a book signing line, so I never expected to be able to just say a quick hello. (I mean, yes, it's a con full of world-class nerds, but still. There's awkward and then there's awkward.) And I kept running across a couple of authors I sort of vaguely knew from my days of going to Norwescon more often, and it almost got to be funny, just kind of waving at each other but not really saying anything, over and over.

I only had a couple of interactions with people who were kind of crappy and a little ableist; and I even was able to make the trek to the Taco del Mar over at the old Convention Center, where I used to get lunch every week back when I worked down there. I miss that place so much and we don't have any of their shops near me anymore, so I revved myself up and hiked over there on Friday, and on Saturday went to Starbucks, because the in-building options weren't great for me. I wish I could have worked things so I had more time to have meals with folks and chat, but at least I know that next time, if I can go again, I have to allow for more time for everything. The art show was pretty cool and I found an artist I really want to buy something from.

All in all, my first WorldCon was a success, and I'm seriously thinking about trying to talk my BFF into going to next year's if I'm able and the cancer isn't too bad. I sincerely doubt after Anaheim, the con is coming back to the US for a good long while, not with so many people afraid to cross our borders.