Liz Argall

It’s been a pretty amazing month, full of so much stuff I ran out of puff and momentum to tell you. I promise I’ll write a real update soon. For now, here’s Tim Minchin on the meaning of life.

Says 18 minutes, but it’s really 12.

Wishing you all joyful short term goals that you can pursue with passion.

More Liz in your FACE!!!!
Today, Thursday, I’ll be at the Locus table in the dealers room from 1:30-2:30.

Come by and check out their sweet stuff, I’ll have mini-comics and sketch stuff if you want.

Picked up the Things mini comics as voted on by readers today. Just need to fold.

Wanna hangout? Wanna come skate?

I’ve updated my main page of Lonestar 3 programming, here is what I’ve added. Yum!

Saturday 20:00-22:00 – Glitter and Mayhem Book Launch at San Antonio Rollercade

I’m not in this book, but you bet I’ll be at the Rollercade supporting this launch.

1. 1) It’s a nifty looking book
2. 2) Meet and skate with editors John Klima, Lynne M. Thomas & Michael Damian Thomas, artist Galen Dara, and authors Rachel Swirsky,  Maurice Broaddus, Cat Rambo, Daryl Gregory, and Vylar Kaftan!
3. 3) It’s glow skating night (they also have classic arcade games, but I’m not sacrificing track time unless it’s an amazing pinball game)
4. 4) It’s rollerskating at a convention

More info

Lonestar 3 is almost upon us! I have signed up for quite a bit! I’d love to see you at any of my events (and given my programming I won’t have a lot of socializing time, so please come visit me.

Thursday 13:30-14:30 Locus Table

I’ll be at the Locus table in the dealers room from 1:30-2:30.

Come by and check out their sweet stuff, I’ll have mini-comics and sketch stuff if you want.

Friday 12:00 – 13:00 – Conflicting Cultures When Preserving the Environment

Panel will identify first and third world perspectives related to environmental stewardship. Who has to pay, and what is the price?

Liz Argall moderating, John K Strickland Jr., Gail Carriger , Christopher Kastensmidt and Brenda Cooper

Friday 16:00 – 17:00 Have a Literary Beer with Liz Argall

Please come and drink with me! Jo Walton will also be having literary beers at this time. Jo is awesome, so come have a beer. You can pretend to hang out with me and really hang out with her and then I can impress her with how people will come and have beer with me. Make me look good to Jo. I want to look good to a poet lady who writes about Victorianesque dragons with ritual cannibalism. If not for me, do it for Jo’s accent.

Do it!

Friday 19:00 – 20:00 Showing off Your Costume

Learn how to best present your costume, whether on stage, posing in the hall for pictures, or with a professional photographer or artist.

Liz Argall moderating, Kevin Roche and John O’Halloran.

and that’s just Friday!!!

Saturday 12:00 – 13:00 Food in Science Fiction and/or Fantasy

From soylent green, to vat-grown protein, to descriptions of lavish meals in Game of Thrones, food is depicted in many forms in science fiction and fantasy. Our panellists discuss the role of food in world-building. There may even be recipes, although probably not for soylent green.

Chris O’Halloran moderating, Liz Argall, Fran Wilde and John Pitts.

Saturday 15:00 – 16:00 First Contact in 3..2..1…

If First Contact were to happen today, and was an open event, how would the human race react? Would we feel inferior, or just try to steal their technology? Might we even attack them? What is the probability of them being hostile, curious, invading, tourists, game hunters, refugees, or would be gods?

Lawrence M. Schoen moderating, Jeffrey Shanks, Liz Argall and Cenk Gokce

Saturday 17:00-18:00 SFWA Table in the dealers room

I will be at the SFWA table. I will sign things. I will draw sketches. If you’re lucky/unlucky you might end up in a comic.

And then it is Saturday night and … we rollerskate!

Saturday 20:00-22:00 – Glitter and Mayhem Book Launch at San Antonio Rollercade

I’m not in this book, but you bet I’ll be at the Rollercade supporting this launch.

1. 1) It’s a nifty looking book
2. 2) Meet and skate with editors John Klima, Lynne M. Thomas & Michael Damian Thomas, artist Galen Dara, and authors Rachel Swirsky, Maurice Broaddus, Cat Rambo, Daryl Gregory, and Vylar Kaftan!
3. 3) It’s glow skating night (they also have classic arcade games, but I’m not sacrificing track time unless it’s an amazing pinball game)
4. 4) It’s rollerskating at a convention

More info

Sunday 15:00 – 16:00 Biodiversity: Why We’re Storing Billions of Seeds

Millennium Seed Bank, which has stored over 3 billion seeds to date from dwindling yet essential plant species. The reasons for storing seeds may be varied. In the case of food crops, many useful plants that were developed over centuries are now no longer used for commercial agricultural production and are becoming rare. Storing seeds also guards against catastrophic events like natural disasters, outbreaks of disease, or war.

H. G. Stratmann moderating, Sam Scheiner, Liz Argall and Amy Thomson

And then I look around with bafflement and confusion. Only one panel today? What do I do? How do I act? How will I remember who I am without a microphone in front of my face meats?

Monday 11:00 – 12:00 The Left Hand of Darkness

Le Guin’s work about a stranger in a strange land (a male human on a world of aliens with shifting genders) is widely regarded of one of the best works of fiction about gender. Longtime fans of the books talk about what The Left Hand of Darkness has meant to them, and if their views of the book have changed over time.

Jo Walton moderating, Laurie Mann, Liz Argall and Lee Martindale.

Will Jo be speaking to me after this panel? I don’t know! I’ve been rereading this book with post it notes in hand I think I might be controversial! I will certainly be speaking on behalf of my 13 year old self and that girl is feisty.

Monday 14:00 – 15:00 Reading: Liz Argall

Fifty minutes of words from my mouthparts. Oh, yeah. Come to my reading! Do it! DO EEEEET! I will be bringing minicomics. I have a soothing voice if you want to lie down at the back and have a nana nap.

And then I am done! Come find me, I might be lost and confused. I might not know who I am anymore! I will be giddy and happy and possibly still in character from my reading (so actually you might want to avoid me).

Wow, that was such a fun evening.

How to describe? Perhaps images will do it better. Thank you thankyou thankyou to our photographer, Nick Skol.

I also did a somewhat rambly youtube post where I talk about the NSHOBO awards and such. The NSHOBOS are great, providing training and support for Derby Non Skating Officials. They have a shiny new website with lots of resources on it.

You should go look at their website and not look at the youtube post below, really, and for real. It’s a sleep deprived Liz talking about raffle prizes, getting second place prize for best NSO to Skater and how much fun the scrimmage was.

Don’t say I didn’t warn you!

I have scrimmaged, I have scrimmaged intensely with incredible skaters. I have scrimmaged for two half hour periods, but I have never been in a roller derby bout. I’ve also never played co-ed derby before.

Tonight I will bout for the first time, in front of a paying audience, one team against the other. Our teams are rare exotic birds, once every few years the world turns upside down and Non Skating Officials try their hand at skating, Skaters try their hand at refereeing, Referees will be announcing and nsoing, and Announcers will be nsoing.

I am excited, I am scared, I am hungry for blood, I don’t want to hurt my fellow nsos. I am honored to be part of this NShObo tradition, skating with so many wonderful officials and glad it will be my first bout.

We’ll be playing at Sk8te town in Port Orchard, a few hours from Seattle today, Saturday August 17 2013. First bout Overbeaters Anonymous Skating against the Hungry Hungry Hippocrates Starting at 5pm and then we skate at 7pm
.
More info on facebook.
More info on brown paper tickets.

NShObos (wearing pink):
Hussy (Captain)
Thurston
Davistation
Miss Nomer
Chronos
StayC/DC
Shutter
Bill Barnum
Coached by John Foul John and Eve L D’MeanHer

NSOooooo Good Lookin’s (wearing white)
Trip O. Treat
Dolemout
Nine Inch Wheels (Captain)
Skol n Masochism
Betsy Nails (this is me)
D-Cup
King Ad-Roll
Justin Jones
Les R. Evil
Coached by Mama Chewie and Miss Red

Some of my favorite parts of fandom, gaming and pop culture have been critiqued by a vocal but all too defining minority.

Things I really don’t need to hear or have implied include “Women are ruining fandom!” “Diversity will mean quotas and lower standards!” “Where are the young people? Fandom is dying because they don’t support my parties and why don’t they laugh along with my friend’s sexual harassment?” “Complaining about bigotry, bullying or systemic issues will destroy what is good and is off topic anyway.” “The wrong things have popular appeal and $60 is too easy a threshold for voting rights and it could ruin everything! Why, voting might get as cheap as $20 if we are not eternally vigilant!” … Cause we all carelessly throw around that kind of money… And so on, ad nauseum.

People who make me care about fandom, inspire me, encourage me, build diverse communities of practice that make me want to dream bigger and better are called menaces and ruinations. Sometimes I am lumped into the group that is called a ‘ruination.’

I don’t like it when incredible people I know are misrepresented, under represented, and sometimes you just have to celebrate your awesome-sauce. Cheryl Morgan was called a menace to fandom because she created the fanzine Emerald City (1995-2006), which existed in digital and well as print. How dare a science fiction fanzine use something as science fictional as the internet? It just wasn’t fair! Cheryl designed badge ribbons in emerald and gold that proudly proclaimed menace to fandom.

Recent controversies have made quite a few of us want to wear a menace to fandom ribbon, given menace reflects people, issues and activism that make our communities of practice a better place to be. A place that dreams of a complex future and likes seeing a more complex past.

I don’t have a ribbon, but this is possibly the first piece of fan art inspired by a ribbon.

I have also created a blank version, so you can write your own menace statement and wave your manage flag high. I’ve written a few definitions of menace, but there’s also space to write your own.

You’re welcome to use and spread both versions of the image, though I would appreciate it if you use it within a human rights/social justice framework that seeks to dismantle bigotry and oppression… ’cause, you know, more awesome is more awesome :)

At Wiscon I had Indian food with great people. Because of this I was challenged in a way I have never been challenged before. I don’t know how many times I tried to write a poem about The Tick that night. I know I mumbled spoon, city, thick layery chocolate cake of justice. Trying to write like the Tick is a kind of poetry and I wanted to do more than mimic the poetry of one of the best surreal poets in superheroism (is surreal the correct word? he certainly has dream-like qualities. An absurd poet of some sort).

After twitching my fingers like antennae for a saag paneer unit of time, I responded to the Ticks verbal poetry by switching into another mode and created visual poetry. I hope someone tries to do an audio version! You can read my poem, among many other fine poets who use actual words over at Smashwords for free! I am particularly fond of Mary Robinette Kowal’s elegant ode to Robin’s legs.

Flying Higher: An Anthology of Superhero Poetry, edited by Michael Damien Thomas and Shira Lipkin.

And in real world physics my Things over on Things Without Arms and Without Legs have been exploring some of the mind bending awesomeness of this universe of ours. Today is my first (but not last) comic about anti-matter!