GeekGirlCon

[jedusor]

mamagotcha bought me a day pass to GeekGirlCon earlier this month (thanks, Mom!) and it was pretty awesome.



There were many cosplayers, but this was IMO the cutest. In the background you can see another girl, presumably this one's older sister, who is dressed as Endor!Leia.



The first panel I went to was the women-in-science panel. This is an elementary student asking what she can do to prepare for a career in science. She got great answers from every woman on the panel, and she was just glowing when she sat down.



I had very little interest in this panel on "catfighting" among geek women, but I glanced at the lineup and couldn't skip it. From left, that's Jennifer K. Stuller, Gail Simone, Hope Larson, Molly McIsaac, Kristina Horner, Marian Call, and Bonnie Burton.



The exhibit hall, wherein I discovered I can in fact spend an hour happily flipping through boxes of comics without even reading any of them. I didn't even get through all the boxes there, either--I'm sure I would have spent much longer on that if there hadn't been panels to get to. I also found some absolutely gorgeous marbled purple and gold dice that I really wanted even though I don't play any dice games. I managed to resist.



A friend of mine fangirling Gail Simone.



This is the only thing I bought--the first issue of Grant Morrison's The Invisibles, which I've been meaning to read for a long time. It was good, I'll have to get my hands on the rest.



At the end of the day, everyone gathered in a theater for a Rocky Horror-style singalong/shoutalong viewing of Labyrinth. This is Karen Prell, who puppeteered the worm and the junk lady in the movie, teaching people how to properly operate a sock puppet. You can see that several people in the audience brought their own. The movie itself was great fun, especially the part where the entire thousand-plus-person audience went nuts every time David Bowie's bulge came onscreen.

I also went to some other panels that weren't all that photogenic. There was one on geek businesses, which was the origin of the following glorious quote: "When I started my business, there was no geeky soap. At all. It's kind of a contradiction, nerds and showering." Then I went to a Harry Potter panel, but then I realized that J.K. Rowling's treatment of female characters actually pisses me off rather a lot, and I didn't really want to spend an hour being pissed off. So I left a few minutes in, and went to the panel on diversity on comics instead, and that was definitely the right decision. Gail Simone kind of makes me go ♥_♥ and forget how to not fall over.

There was also a one-woman talk on getting girls into STEM fields, and why there are so few there now. It was good, but she spent way too much time convincing us that something needed to be done (dude, if we're in the audience at this panel, we KNOW something needs to be done) and not enough time talking about what to do. Then there was another one-woman talk about emo music that didn't really focus on women at all, but hey, we got to watch the "I'm Not Okay (I Promise)" music video, which is always good times.

I'm glad this con happened, and I'm glad I got to be there. It sounded like most people there had a great time--hopefully it will continue on next year.

Comments

[mamagotcha.livejournal.com]

^_^

Thanks for the write-up! Love ya!