My con report just isn't happening as one big thing so instead there will be minireports as I get time and attention span to devote.

However, I really want to put in a word for everyone who came to my Everything and Anything But Writing panel; I thought it would literally be me, aerialiste, and a person or two deciding if my blackmail material was sufficiently motivating, but as it turns out, there weren't enough chairs in the (granted, small) room, and also, only one other competing panel so whee! And no, I didn't blackmail any of them, or at least, I don't think so.

Actually happened: I kind of lingered at the door thinking the last panel was still going because many people were in there looking engaged and ready for anything. Finally, enough people were looking at me in puzzlement holding my backpack and drink at the door for me to realize maybe I should...do something.

Not verbatim but close to it:
Me: ...are you here for the writing thing?
Them: Uh, yeah.
Me: You're kidding.

(Last line may be verbatim. Which I bet was super reassuring coming from their presumed moderator; thank you for staying, btw.)

My goal was (hopefully) a panel where people would talk openly about the problems they had around writing; for the most part, the 'writing' part when doing it was just fine. That definitely happened and was honesty amazing. I haven't had this much useful information come out of an hour even during most of my creative writing classes combined.

(My professor is to blame for every time you think "uh, seperis, that's very...purple'. People, he told me to do that like a lot. Who was I to deny a poet all the imagery ever?)

( anything and everything but writing )

Anyway, everyone was great on that panel, it was incredibly informative and I hope others felt the same way because I definitely walked out with some new working tools to try and ways to work. Anyone who was at that panel, feel free to leave a comment (and your strategies if you want!) since you did some great work in that room.

ETA: greywash has some info on text to speech for Macs here, along with some other things.

Escapade was no lie fucking amazing, and we'll totally get into that later, but right now, of all the things I've done both questionable and not (and only sometimes drunk), there is one I feel is the most worrisome, which is saying something, not that I'm referring to anything specific here though Christ, Orange Grove is fucking delicious.

This issue being, my propensity to do bathroom business in dark bathrooms.

Like, has anyone noticed this? I have no idea, but it is indeed a thing and I think I am successfully playing it off with an attitude of 'light is so overrated for purposes of relieving, come on' or more likely, no one noticed but paranoia is a thing, welcome to my brain.

A not entirely unexpected side effect of living it up in your low-budget Star Trek apartment: my bathroom has motion sensors and an Echo Dot for emergencies like well, that, and really trying to remember who played in a movie and Alexa wiki'ing for me from my toilet and/or shower when my phone is not available or I don't want to soak it in shower water.

So basically, bathroom lights--the turning off/on thing--is not something I think about like, at all. At work, they're always on of course, and basically at any given public bathroom sitch, the odds are multiple stalls equal always-on. The one-offs are also fine in teh given convenience store or restaurant, which is great. This issue has come up with my mom and visiting other people's houses and vacation this summer, but for reasons unclear, it did not occur to me how a hotel is not really a one-off and maybe I broke something important in the executive function zone in regard to lightswitches because I'm also kind of sitting in the dark at times trying to work out what to do when Alexa isn't there and I don't have an app for it.

Add any amount of alcohol and a sense of urgency, 'I don't care' kicks in (really, it's better that way considering the alternative) but once that last Orange Grove and the pink wine wear off, you are now able to count (on more than one hand) how many times you were in a closed dark bathroom with at least one to three people within visual range and hope they weren't paying attention or were super drunk. Does it actually matter or will anyone care? No (maybe?) but that's not the problem; the problem is I'm day four in this hotel and cannot fucking do lights.

I am not saying "Alexa, turn on the lights" but that literally is the limit of my adaptability. Strap in, folks, it gets weirder.

I cannot remember where any lightswitch is even having sought out and used it in my own goddamn room. More than once. If your next thought is "uh, by the door" well, yeah but when I'm in the goddamn room it's like I'm searching for Narnia. Did you know lamps have switches? That shit was a surprise to me, even though I do know how lamps work and indeed switches were present. Where are the lights in the room? By the doors, awesome. Lamps all have switches at the base. This is simple, we're good, right?

When I enter the room, I will promptly forget this very basic knowledge and sit down on the couch, baffled the lights aren't on, and then the search for switches begins like I was homeschooled like on goddamn Mars or something. I feel like maybe I invented an entirely new category of shame--and not like I was short on 'shame reasons' before--and while the 'inventing' part is kind of cool, can't lie, its offset by how utterly bizarre this is even in theory.

Wait for it: shit's about to just get sad.

I'm not used to not being able to control the amount of light around me, which is bad enough (I like a lot). Far worse--so much worse--I have to now adjust myself to some other (inferior) lighting situation when I literally designed my light set up to add many many many lights to my apartment specifically where I am going to sit, lounge, read, sleep, eat, I'm not kidding, and some have scripts to turn on and off at different kelvins to meet my super specific goddamn needs depending on time of day. I resent I must move where the lights are even though I'm more comfortable where I am, this is bullshit--like, 'entitlement' is almost too kind for this situation.

To give this a surreal touch it really didn't need, I feel existentially rejected by my hotel room when I enter and it's dark, because at home, the second I arrive, the lights come on in a bright "welcome home" and light my path, not unlike being a god (a really pathetic one but hey, you take what you can get).

Fuck yeah, this is funny, but I'm also kind of resentful and my brain keeps supplying "maybe next time bring Alexa with you" at which time--this has happened three times--I start listing out "and bring my smart lightbulbs because obviously adding smart switches would take too much time and also maybe the hotel wouldn't be down with that and also those are kinda expensive and a motion sensor for the bathroom, you can write a script for it easy, I have a few...." and that's how far this shit gets before reality kicks in, which is like at least all that sentence too late. And maybe the quoted bit before that, I'm actually not sure.

Oh, there's more, come on: I can't tell Alexa to change the temperature, turn on/off the air conditioner/heater; I don't even have an app for that because the hotel thermostats aren't smart--or hey, mine--and come to think, I don't even know where it is (see 'switches').

So like the bathroom thing is nothing (shame? Yes) compared to this image I want you to keep: me, sitting uncomfortably in the dark with an unwanted blanket due to inexplicable chill resenting the fuck that this room isn't catering to me before sullenly looking for lightswitches like some kind of crazy person. Over. And. Over. While feeling the room hates me and hell yes it's mutual now.

In closing: I now question the realism of every time people from Star Trek go into the past and aren't in a state of constant, low-key hostility and bafflement because I've only been doing this two years and now am unfit to live in the real world and also super sullen about it. And listening to goddamn Halsey while I sulk, because hi, you did subscribe to this journal of your own free will, and yeah, this is the kind of quality content you're here for.

So a question for people going to Escapade or have been to Escapade about panel contents. Specifically, trigger warnings.

For the Magicians panel on Saturday, I'll be one of the moderators, and I'd like some opinions on trigger warnings. I mean, this panel will need them, so I'm wondering how I should go about this.

( here's my reasoning on both )

Thoughts, anyone? I want this to be as fun and safe and interesting as possible for everyone involved.