a late and brief Arisia report

[rushthatspeaks]

Short version: good, but exhausting.

Longer version: I am never ever ever being on that many panel items ever again because by the end of the con I was basically sleepwalking, and I really did not get to see all that much in the way of programming that I wasn't on, though I did get sufficient dealer's room and artshow time. Nine panels in four days is at least three panels too many. The problem was, I couldn't figure out what to drop, and I was worried that if I asked to be dropped from things without specifying what I'd get taken off something I really, really wanted. Next time I will have to triage harder.

Great Logistical Discovery: My favorite Malaysian restaurant, Penang, turns out to deliver to the con hotel via Foodler. Getting food in the Arisia area can be difficult if you are tightly scheduled, because the places that are walking distance all wind up mobbed, and the food options in the hotel itself are both crowded and terrible. This year there were food trucks which came and parked outside, which is an improvement, but they sold out of stock fairly quickly. The con suite and green room also wound up pretty stripped. All of that I expected. But being able to order food from a place I actively like and having it turn up in a reasonable amount of time-- yay internets! And many thanks to ckd for suggesting we order delivery. This is going to be my default for dinners for Arisia and Boskone from now on, basically.

Panels I Enjoyed Being On Most: Both the Welcome to Night Vale and Homestuck panels were so. much. fun. Rooms full of happy people who like the thing the panel was on, and are aware of its flaws and the issues in its fandoms but just love talking about it. Cosplayers, both rooms were filled with excellent cosplayers-- the WTNV panel had multiple hooded figures (one of whom pointed out that it is the easiest cosplay she has ever done) and a tiny LED Glow Cloud which changed colors. One of the other panelists was dressed as an Eternal Scout, with correct badges. I think I was the only person in an original-flavor WTNV shirt, but I saw instances of just about every shirt they make. It was also just a very good conversation which did not devolve into a quote-off, until the very end when that was a fun thing to do with five minutes. kate_nepveu had a better writeup; I was not taking notes because I can't do that and be on the panel at the same time.

One thing I love about Homestuck cosplayers is the ingenuity. There were an alternate-outfits godtier John and Vriska based on the idea that humans get (feathery) wings when they go godtier that were just magnificent. There was Cronus Ampora badly and disturbingly dressed as a human. He'd cut off his horns and there were just stumps and ew and I was impressed. And there was an entire cosplay group of trolls who'd dressed as things from other canons, so we had Karkat dressed as Harry Potter, and Terezi as Uhura (she looked great in the minidress), and Sollux as a Jedi with a double-bladed lightsaber, half-red half-blue. They had an Eridan with them, who just looked like, you know, Eridan, and I said to him 'So what are you supposed to be?' and he held up his hands, which were even more covered in blingy dimestore jewelry than usual, and said 'Lord of the Rings'. I have been laughing about that on and off ever since. The panel itself talked about the infinite canvas, and the difficulties of archiving the comic for future generations, and how much we want any idea at all of what the licensing deal Andrew Hussie and Namco worked out looks like because of the implications for creator control in webcomics and the comics industry generally. At one point the entire room, in unison, was asked to imitate Terezi's voice to see if we'd all come up with about the same sound for her and everybody had. Lovely experience, would do again.

Literary Discovery of the Con: Max Gladstone was the person I'd never met and hadn't heard of in my reading slot, and I am officially impressed and will be reading his books as soon as my fiction-reading brain is up to fiction I haven't already read fifty times. It is rare for me to hear something at a reading and wish to go purchase it immediately, and his stuff was that.

Worst Bits: I spent the entire weekend getting up at what, to my body, is approximately three in the morning. By Monday it had become physically painful. This is one of those things that I simply have to cope with given my specific sleep disorder, but probably I should just not try to do anything involving brain on Monday of a con.

Also, at one point, I introduced myself, as the moderator of the panel we were about to be on, to a panelist I had not met yet, and extended my hand for a shake. Instead he bowed over it and kissed it. I can see from here, maybe, if I squint, a universe in which this is polite-ish behavior, but I do not think it is this universe, and I do not think it is how one greets the moderator. It read as 'I am going to Be Chivalrous At People and not listen to a damn word you or anybody else has to say', which proved to be the case as the panel progressed. It's also right on that edge where, on the one hand, as I said, I can see from here a universe in which it might be vaguely polite, and said panelist was of a generation where I could see it being a thing people did in some formal situations, so I didn't actively yell at him. Just glowered. But on the other hand it was condescending and showed ignorance of boundaries and was somebody putting his mouth on part of my body without asking me, so I have been actively annoyed about it. I decided not to talk to him about it or report it to anyone official because it was balanced so precisely on that edge, which is why I am not using his name, but I am mentioning it because persons who still might consider hand-kissing polite should really be aware that you should ask first, and that the reaction to this incident in my social circle was 'aargh creepy did you have any Purell?'

All in all, though, a completely reasonable con with a lot of fun social time, good discussion, and interesting programming. I'll put my Boskone schedule up pretty soon.

ETA: okay, based on very sensible things a couple of people have said to me, I have emailed the con's incident report email and described the incident. It was not sexual harassment in the sense of being sexually pressuring; it was sexism, a demonstration that I could be treated differently because of my gender presentation, and an attempt to exercise some amount of social power over me based on gender and age. Which counts as harassment, and which I had rather he not do again. So I've reported it. I am not, however, giving his name here at this time. That may or may not be a thing I choose to do later. Please respect that.

Comments

[msilverstar]

Hah, there's a creepiness of handkissing thread on reddit (of all places) http://www.reddit.com/r/AskWomen/comments/1w7v6y/do_women_really_not_like_the_whole_fedora_persona/

[rydra_wong]

But on the other hand it was condescending and showed ignorance of boundaries and was somebody putting his mouth on part of my body without asking me, so I have been actively annoyed about it.

Also: it's gendered/gendering. It's "I am going to treat you as a Fair Lady, and you should be grateful and appreciative".

I have had experience with creepy hand-kissing, so I share your aaaaargh.

[anne]

1. MAX GLADSTONE YES. Both of his books are fantastic--same world, different characters. They come from different regions and the cultures aren't at all alike.

2. Creepy hand-kisser, in addition to being creepy, was DOIN IT RONG. Gentlemen bowed over hands. No actual mouth-to-hand contact was involved unless you were pretty sure the lady was up for games later. So he's either ignorant, or really very exceessively creepy.

[kate_nepveu]

Uggggh, hand-kissing, NO.

You should do what you feel is best and I will support you in whatever that is.

I actually didn't write up the WtNV panel in any detail because I was a little burned out on writing about the show after all those re-listen posts. But stuff we talked about that I remember now:

* How we came to listen, what got us started
* Ways in which Cecil was and was not a reliable narrator
* (With a side of "What is up with Cecil?")
* Handling of underrepresented groups
* Community radio pastiche
* Long-term plotting
* Nature of Night Vale: pocket universe in our own, soft place/crossroads, full-out AU?
* Favorite characters, episodes, quotes

I am happy to discuss these with anyone! (Haven't listened to the new episode yet, though.)

[jinian]

Are we psychic about books, is what I want to know. It's not the first time we've started reading/getting interested in the same not-new thing at the same time for different reasons. :)

[thistleingrey]

I like the main plot for Gladstone's first novel better than that of the second; the second is essentially boy seeking girl with too-obvious twist. But they are well done, and I look forward to reading forthcoming #3.

[genarti]

Penang delivers to the con hotel?? MENTAL NOTE. I am going to be availing myself of that at some future point, oh yes.

Also, urgh, yes, to hand-kissing. I'm willing to go with it in a specifically flirty-historical(ish) context like an SCA dance -- not that I've been to one of those since college -- but in any other context it's so off-putting and vaguely creepy. And the trouble is that one the guy goes in for it there's no discreet way to redirect that I've found; you have to either yank your hand free or put up with it. Or wrestle back into a handshake grip, I guess, but I have never had that occur to me in time to manage it on the spot.

I'm glad you had fun, though! I certainly did.

[rushthatspeaks]

Yes, Penang does deliver to the con hotel! Although, please note, only if you use Foodler or another internet delivery service; you can't just call them up. We tried that and it did not work.

[genarti]

How odd! I'd've expected that if anything it'd be the other way around. So noted, then.

[eredien]

I feel like just knowing that Penang is on Foodler makes my life a little bit better.

[desperance.livejournal.com]

Literary Discovery of the Con: Max Gladstone was the person I'd never met and hadn't heard of in my reading slot, and I am officially impressed and will be reading his books as soon as my fiction-reading brain is up to fiction I haven't already read fifty times. It is rare for me to hear something at a reading and wish to go purchase it immediately, and his stuff was that.

I did a reading with Max in SF, and promptly bought his book, because yes.

I am mentioning it because persons who still might consider hand-kissing polite should really be aware that you should ask first

Trouble with that is that for anyone to whom it is still polite to kiss a hand in greeting, no way would it be polite to ask first; those would be, as you say, two separate universes barely observable from each other. Also, I do not believe anyone inhabiting this universe still treats hand-kissing as a simple politeness unentangled with the setting of positions; I suspect he was saying exactly what you read, and what was later proved. There are manners, and there are statements, and I'm not sure they're even a Venn diagram; good manners don't make statements.

[rosefox]

Worst Bits: I spent the entire weekend getting up at what, to my body, is approximately three in the morning. By Monday it had become physically painful. This is one of those things that I simply have to cope with given my specific sleep disorder, but probably I should just not try to do anything involving brain on Monday of a con.

This is a lot of why I don't do panel appearances unless I have to, and when I do have to, I make it very very VERY clear that I am NOT to be put on any panels before noon. I spent a long time arranging my life so I can sleep from 02:00 to 10:00, and I'm not going to rearrange it just for a convention.

I don't know the specifics of your sleep disorder, so I don't know whether that sort of boundary-setting in advance is doable or useful.

It's also right on that edge where, on the one hand, as I said, I can see from here a universe in which it might be vaguely polite, and said panelist was of a generation where I could see it being a thing people did in some formal situations, so I didn't actively yell at him. Just glowered. But on the other hand it was condescending and showed ignorance of boundaries and was somebody putting his mouth on part of my body without asking me, so I have been actively annoyed about it.

I'm... missing the "edge" you describe. This guy lives in the present-day world. He knows perfectly well that's not anything remotely approaching appropriate etiquette in any situation anymore, and certainly not at a convention. He's just doing it because he's found a way to get away with putting his mouth on people.

I'm sorry he did that to you, and also sorry that you felt you had to make allowances and could only glower instead of yelling.

[eub.livejournal.com]

The odds that Hand-Mouther innocently believed that his targets enjoy this interaction? Slim to negative. Given that, he can't seriously consider it polite himself.

[rushthatspeaks.livejournal.com]

... you make an exceedingly valid point. Thank you.

[rushthatspeaks.livejournal.com]

I have Delayed Sleep Phase Disorder, and ideally sleep from ~04:30-13:00, later if I have trouble getting to sleep once in bed. I do tell conventions that I don't want anything before noon, but this year that didn't happen. The really annoying bit is that the panel at 11:30 AM was one I was moderating. I'm used to sucking it up and just dealing with being places early-for-me, because there are a lot of things where that is what has to happen (airports, the open hours of some stores especially bank branches, and so on), but I think the moral of this Arisia was that I need to set boundaries more firmly about scheduling. I used the words sleep disorder on the panel-request form, but I need to be more proactive about turning down panel times that won't work for me, even though that is, frankly, terrifying to imagine doing. Still, it needs to be a thing that I can do.

Annoying dude... yeah, I don't know, he appeared to me to be in his seventies, and for much of my life that's been old enough for me to assume that a person that age was around when hand-kissing was a thing and is therefore clinging to established behavior patterns, but it occurs to me now, talking with people about it, that it's been a few years since I had to deal with elderly men who hand-kiss. If I look at when he was born, if he's like seventy-four now he'd have been a young man in the fifties and no, that's not a generation where that was a thing. The last time I was around elderly men who kissed my hand, they'd been young men in the thirties, and they hadn't gotten over people not wearing hats anymore either. Note to self: elderly men now not actually from a generation where hand-kissing was established practice-- act accordingly. Not having done that arithmetic is, in fact, why I did not yell at him about this; well, I have now done the math.

It is also true that he should, in fact, be aware that he is living in the present-day world and this is not acceptable, and I think he may in fact be relying on his age to help him get away with this sort of thing. (Dude was fucking patronizing on the panel, I tell you what, though I was able to make him let other people talk without much difficulty.) eub has a real point below about the fact that he really could not have thought I would enjoy that interaction, which makes it both a power-play and a power-play he was counting on being too innocuous-seeming for him not to get away with.

GAH.

And he's on con staff. Double gah.

[rosefox]

I do tell conventions that I don't want anything before noon, but this year that didn't happen. The really annoying bit is that the panel at 11:30 AM was one I was moderating. I'm used to sucking it up and just dealing with being places early-for-me, because there are a lot of things where that is what has to happen (airports, the open hours of some stores especially bank branches, and so on), but I think the moral of this Arisia was that I need to set boundaries more firmly about scheduling. I used the words sleep disorder on the panel-request form, but I need to be more proactive about turning down panel times that won't work for me, even though that is, frankly, terrifying to imagine doing. Still, it needs to be a thing that I can do.

As a three-time convention program organizer, allow me to reassure you that if you set boundaries around time and the convention ignores them, the convention has just made a major error, and you are entirely within your rights to explain that no in fact you really are not available during the times you've said you're not available. It doesn't matter whether your restrictions are because of a sleep disorder or needing to arrange childcare or your flight getting in late or just not feeling like waking up early when you're on vacation. You get to say "During these hours, for the purposes of convention programming, I am Not Here".

Literally every program participant has available and unavailable times, and no one will think less of you for stating yours and making them stick. I do think a lot less of program organizers who asked you for yours and then failed to take them into consideration when arranging your part of the program.

Also, I've never known a program chair who was at all offended by someone dropping a program item or three. It happens all the time, for all the reasons above and more. I promise it won't go on your permanent record or anything like that.

[rushthatspeaks.livejournal.com]

... yeah, on consideration I have written to the con about this as sexist behavior.

Thank you, that was helpful.

[rosefox]

I'm really glad it was helpful. I didn't want to come across as scolding you or anything, because you did what felt right to you in the moment and that's important. But I'm also glad this guy isn't getting a pass on his odious behavior.

[nineweaving.livejournal.com]

It was lovely to be empanelled with you, in spite of Le Chevalier Chèvre. And now I'm doubly sorry I had to miss your your reading.

Nine

[telophase.livejournal.com]

And what the hand-kissers don't realize is that proper hand-kissing involves no contact of the lips to the hand--you brush your lips in the air a fraction of an inch above the knuckles.

The only place I've been where hand-kissing was appropriate was the years I spent in the SCA, and even then noboy realized they weren't supposed to touch your hand. Although that doesn't excuse the worst of that bunch, who took the opportunity to sensuously and flirtatiously--or so they thought--lick your hand, which is just AAARRRGGGHHH EUW EUW EUW EUW. (More fool they: often we were in a campground with no good handwashing facilities, and this was in the era before hand sanitizers...)

[deor.livejournal.com]

Some do know that the proper way is air-kissing. And some folks, especially if just off an SCA event or cosplaying medieval/renaissance, will sort of automatically bow (or curtsy) when usually they might shake hands or nod to someone. I cannot see any universe in which *licking* someone's hand in public greeting is supposed to be a good thing.

[ethelmay.livejournal.com]

I don't think I knew that. Though the only source I can think of offhand is Rebecca West's The Birds Fall Down, which is about early 20C Russians (and anyway West could have gotten it wrong). Even then, the heroine says that most men only brush her knuckles with their lips.

[telophase.livejournal.com]

I want to say it's a Miss Manners thing, which means it lies at the intersection of modern etiquette and period etiquette, but the only Miss Manners book I can lay my hands on right now doesn't mention whether it's an air kiss of tactile kiss, but jsut says that the gentleman employing it must properly have a suggestion of a Continental background, and a trip of 14-21 days doesn't count. :)

[sovay]

Literary Discovery of the Con: Max Gladstone

Three Parts Dead (2012) is great. The ending is a little more conventional than the rest of the novel, but it still manages to pull off some things you just don't see in contemporary fantasy, and everything that happens in the ending is ridiculously well-built in advance. I will be acquiring Two Serpents Rise (2013) as soon as it's no longer hardcover-only. I have to thank sairaali for more or less throwing the book at me on the last day of the con.

It was not sexual harassment in the sense of being sexually pressuring; it was sexism, a demonstration that I could be treated differently because of my gender presentation, and an attempt to exercise some amount of social power over me based on gender and age. Which counts as harassment, and which I had rather he not do again.

Love.

[encephalogistic.livejournal.com]

I love the idea of trolls trying to cosplay as human things. It is such a them thing to do.

I have a ninety-year old grandmother who was raised to be hyper-polite in extremely fancy social engagements during the twenties and thirties (up to and including presidents Harding and Coolidge). We in her family consider this to be a superpower, because she's really, really good at it. She, in turn, is amused by the attention it gets. She says it's very easy. "Just do the nicest possible thing in the nicest possible way."

Mr. I-wonder-what-you-taste-like doesn't sound like he was trying very hard to be nice. He was going out of his way to break with social conventions, trying to grab as much of the social center of gravity as possible. That's boorish on the best of days, whether or not you happen to remember the era of fancy hats. Exploiting gender perceptions on the road to that goal is at best a petulant demand for an eroding social privilege, and at worst a blatant attempt to reassert it. In either case, reporting it to the con is an excellent way to respond.

[negothick.livejournal.com]

For some reason, hand-kissing was a thing among many older fans and writers, born anywhere from the 1920s up to the 1950s. Several BNFs were famous for it. Some (as your other commenters have said) were masters of the air-kiss, but others were not. It was their shtik, and they were shticking to it, whether those they were introduced it cared or not. Your Bete Noir was probably one of the above.

[gaudior.livejournal.com]

Your Bete Noir was probably one of the above.

That's all well and good, but if his shtick makes people (like my wife) uncomfortable, I would like him to stop doing it.

A thing I've noticed, in this conversation, is how much less interested I am in the viewpoint of the people doing the discomforting behavior than I am in the viewpoint of the people being discomforted. There are a zillion possible reasons why a person might do a thing, but from the point of view of a person trying to live in the same community as them, the only thing I really care about is that they be given the message, "hey! Doing this thing has consequences!" and that they be less likely to do the thing to me.

[negothick.livejournal.com]

I was not trying to excuse, only to explain. "Because it's what I do" is the perp's usual defense.

[anna-wing.livejournal.com]

In terms of modern Western etiquette, when kissing the hand of a married woman to whom one has not previously been introduced, the correct procedure is to bow over the hand but not make actual physical contact.
It is improper to actually kiss the hand on first acquaintance.
It is improper to kiss the hand if the hand has not been offered in the position where it makes it clear that a kiss is expected (palm down).
It is improper to kiss the hand of an unmarried woman (or one whose marital status is not immediately obvious when the introduction is made), unless she is an older woman (and therefore by definition of higher social status than the person doing the kissing).

So this chap fails on every possible count.