Ask A Manager: fighting to be the only woman in the firefighter calendar
Aug. 22nd, 2025 10:54 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
![[community profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/community.png)
There is not just one Worldcon. In Seattle this year, there were 5500 registered attendees plus another 2000 or so bought single-day memberships, meaning there were ~7500 different Worldcons this year.
Worldcon is many things to many people, but the one thing it always is, is an intentional community. It’s an event that happens because people give their time, their energy, their skills, and their care to make it happen.
In this way, Worldcon is, and always has been, what we make of it. It is simultaneously the home of one of our genre’s most important awards, a premiere costuming event, a professional development incubator, a social structure, an important economic opportunity for some, a schmoozefest, and a celebration of all that the science fiction/fantasy genres have to offer. It’s also a microcosm of all the stresses and problems of our society, and really, how could it not be?
( Read the rest of this entry » )Mirrored from Cecilia Tan.
I then grabbed dinner and went back to our room to watch the Hugo Awards. A brief pause from general goodwill: I watched the first 45 minutes of the ceremony with the sound on, got tired of the song repetition and the mispronunciations of finalist names and switched to captions. So I missed the part where the editorial staff of Khoreo got skipped over and the Lodestar finalist was skipped completely and a bunch of things covered elsewhere. I will just say that when GRRM mangled multiple finalist names at the 2020 Hugo Awards in New Zealand, there was an understandable hue and cry about it and it was deemed highly disrespectful (which it was). This is no different and the impacted finalists are due an apology. Also: for the love of whatever you hold sacred, Hugo Admins, address the damn issue. Hire transcriptionists, compel the hosts to practice names, record the names ahead of time, but DO SOMETHING so we stop experiencing this frankly xenophobic nonsense every year.
In brief: book is the least I've been annoyed by any such book I have yet read, which is fairly impressive going, especially since the copy in the BL's collection is the first edition originally published in 2003 rather than the second edition updated in 2013; more notes possibly to follow (subject to reaching a decision about whether I want to hold out for getting my hands on a copy of the second edition before talking about it in public).
Entertainment: shortly after I finally settled myself down in my nice corner desk against a window with my back to the wall and a whole enclosed-in-glass booth between me and Any Other Readers... my watch buzzed to let me know that I'd just finished a Period Of High Stress. The high stress was, obviously, sitting quietly wedged into a corner on public transport while reading a relaxing book. I did know public transport was exhausting! I have been saying! I'm still kind of impressed at the watch Earnestly Informing Me, In Case I Didn't? Know? and mildly regretting that I'm planning to do the same-ish again tomorrow, and also also I am reassessing A Lot of my wheelchair use in light of this...
Related entertainment: how much my hypervigilance kicked up when I returned from lunch to discover that neatly leaving my notebook and reading-book in a stack on my desk had not had sufficient inhibitory effect, and a Noisy Person had decided to sit diagonally across from me, in my Space, being Noisy. The amount I relaxed when they (temporarily) fucked off is another one for the "yep I can see how not leaving the house for over a year and then staying Hyper Local has added up to me looking much more functional" files...
Today I am thankful for...
In which Shaun learns something significant late in Feed that he canonically doesn't find out until Deadline, and everything goes very (very, very) differently.
I can't seem to face up to the facts
I'm tense and nervous and I can't relax
I can't sleep, 'cause my bed's on fire
Don't touch me, I'm a real live wire
Spicy pillow, qu'est-ce que c'est?
Fa-fa-fa-fa, fa-fa-fa-fa, far better
Run-run, run-run-run away
Oh-oh-oh
Name: xmcu_fietro
Age group: 20's
Country: USA
Subscription/Access Policy: I'm so new to DW that I'm actually not 100% sure what this means, sorry!
Main Fandoms: X-Men movies (I'm super hyperfixated on Quicksilver, who my username references), Wandavision, Criminal Minds, My Chemical Romance
Other Fandoms: Doctor Who, Evanescence, Muse, BBC Sherlock, Moulin Rouge!, Percy Jackson, Arrested Development, Succession, Barry, IDK How But They Found Me, Pride and Prejudice, Autumn's Grey Solace, and lots of Broadway shows (Les Miserables, Heathers, etc).
I like to post about: I only have one post so far, but I'll probably post a mix of assorted fandom content and personal posts!
About Me/Other Info: I'm AuDHD and have dysautonomia and hypermobility, so sometimes I'll talk about that. Other interests that I have besides fandom stuff include psychology, philosophy, disability studies, sewing, drawing, writing (usually fanfiction), photography, gothic architecture/decor, fashion (especially styles like dark academia or anything that incorporates victorian elements), and playing electric bass.