Monday, May 23, 2016

WisCon Schedule

It's hard to believe WisCon starts this week! This year, I'm running the Broad Universe table, so I'll be driving up Friday morning to get it set up. I expect to spend more time than usual working the table, but I'm also part of the following panels:

Friday (5/27), 2:30-3:45--The Fandom Awakens: Everything is Star Wars and nothing hurts! Let's talk about the importance of casting a woman and two men of color as the leading characters in this major movie franchise. Let's talk about how no one in the cast wants to gender BB-8. Let's talk about General Leia. Let's talk The Force Awakens until episode 8 comes out or we all run out of breath…
(I'm moderating this panel)

Saturday (5/28), 1:00-2:15--Broad Universe Rapid-Fire Reading (I'll be reading from Chaos Season)

Sunday (5/29), 8:30-9:45--Why Did We Have To Fight For Rey Star Wars Toys: First they left out Black Widow, then they left out Gamora, and then Disney launched their Star Wars: The Force Awakens toy line with nary a hint of Rey, one of the movie's leads. Disney and toymaker Hasbro responded to the outrage expressed in the #WheresRey hashtag with facile explanations and no real apologies, but did finally unveil some Rey action figures and other merchandise at ToyFair. Why did it have to go down this way? Why couldn't Disney have made Rey as prominent on all the merch from the start as they did Finn and Kylo Ren? Why do we still have to fight for women in the "boy toys" aisle and why is there still a divide between "boys" and "girls" toys at all?

Monday (5/30), 11:30-12:45--The SignOut 

Add in seeing local and WisCon friends and celebrating my son's 9th birthday on Monday, and I expect to be a trifle busy.


What are your Memorial Day weekend plans? Feel free to share them in the comments.

4 comments:

Alex J. Cavanaugh said...

Rather dumb they didn't make a Rey figure. They made Princess Leia back in the day.
Enjoy WisCon and hope Alex has a great birthday.

Sandra Ulbrich Almazan said...

Apparently they wanted to keep her role in the film a secret. That doesn't excuse making a Monopoly game for TFA and using Darth Vader, who only shows up as a burnt mask, instead of Rey.

Maria Zannini said...

It looks like it's going to rain all through Memorial weekend. We'll try to get outside and grill though. We have a roof over our grill.

re: Rey
They definitely dropped the ball.

PT Dilloway said...

If only I could afford to go to Wisconsin. My brother has successfully gotten his daughters to play with Transformers another "boy's" toy.

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