Convention Review from a first timer: Ad Astra 2018 - Toronto (Part 3 of 5)

Third panel - Podcasting for Absolutely Everyone 

(JF Garrard, Sarah WaterRaven, Fingers and Justus R. Stone)

Well, for every good presentation I go to, there has to be a bad one.  Right?  Right?  

So the door locked every time it was closed and one of the panelists was a bit late.  Not a big deal.  However, instead of going on without said panelist or waiting until he arrived, a member of the audience went up and joined the presentation instead.  I don’t know if anyone on the panel knew him, but he said he’s something of a podcaster (I haven’t been able to find any of his stuff), so I guess...

    

Things kind of devolved from there.  And that’s unfortunate, because there were useful tidbits sprinkled in amongst the ashes.  Equipment, programs, hosting platforms and all-important RSS feeds.   

JF Garrard was someone I could have heard more from.  She was interesting to listen to – she seemed to care a lot about delivering information the audience could use – kept getting interrupted by the other panelist (more on him in a second).  This was a real shame, because she was the professional there.  She writes, runs Dark Helix Press and conducts podcasting interviews for a magazine called Ricepaper out in BC (among other things – shout-out to Amazing Stories).  I’ve got tons of respect for her – she had the courage to fund her own business and start publishing works by herself and others despite the risks involved – her many side projects must keep her really, really busy – and she’s one of the few Asian women I know of who actively writes and edits in the science fiction space.  Frankly I wanted to hear more about her perspectives on both the industry and the culture within the sci-fi community than anything anyone else was saying.  

That’s not a knock on their experience or expertise, just on the way they presented.  Everyone can have a bad day - I've had my share as well, so please don't take this as a knock on them personally.  I'm talking about a single panel that was conducted under unusual circumstances.

Anyway, let’s talk about the main issue here.  Fingers (as he called himself) was the audience member who went up and kind of took over the panel.  He was eager, I’ll give him that, but he kept competing for attention.  Dude is a loud man, and I just couldn’t get past his antics.  Which is a bit of a shame, since he had experience and some good information, but that got drowned out by all the bluster.  Up until near the end there wasn’t anything egregious, but then it all went sideways.  Complaining about girls who do unboxings and get tons of viewers because of their ‘model’ bodies isn’t my idea of a good presentation.  It’s my idea of sexist as hell.  

Finally, we heard from Justus R. Stone.  He was the panelist who was a little late.  No biggie there.  He’s got some traction in a niche market – he does a podcast on light novels with some other like-minded people around the world, so he talked about how to coordinate that (communal and individual recording is apparently a must).  I don’t know if he subscribes to the whole ‘waifu’ subculture given some of the promotional images he uses for his podcast, or if he’s just critiquing the genre and using the imagery ironically.  It could be both – it could be neither.  If you have a listen, you can judge for yourself.  

He did touch on perhaps the thorniest issue on the planet – racism – but I was honestly disappointed in how he dealt with it.  I don’t think he supports racism or anything, but when he mentioned that one of his white guests threw out the n-word during one of their discussions, his response was to edit that incident out of existence.  Not to acknowledge it – not to call it out – but to digitally remove it from the conversation.  As if it never happened.  Why?  Because the guy who said it had ‘a lot of other interesting things to say.’

Now, full disclosure, I’m a white man (surprise, surprise).  I just happen to be married to a lovely biracial woman who has to deal with all the overt and covert racism that exists in our society (yes, even in Canada).  And throughout our years together, I’ve come to recognize the signs of overt and covert prejudice, some of the micro-aggressions people of color have to deal with on a regular basis.  And, bluntly speaking, I don’t like it when someone I care about has to put up with hostility or suspicion for no other reason than she’s not the right color.  I don’t like it when people excuse or disbelieve the behavior that reinforces those prejudices.  And I really don’t like it when people pretend something they’ve experienced firsthand or done or said themselves wasn’t a big deal because it was ‘just a joke.’  

As my wife would say, it’s true that we have freedom of speech.  What we don’t have is freedom from the consequences of that speech.  Intentions are worthless – they pave the way to Hell for a reason.  No one’s stopping you from acknowledging and apologizing for your own mistakes or calling people out for theirs.  Just don’t stand there silently, pretending everything’s just fine.  Or expect applause.  

Personally, I think that’s a big part of why, as a society, we’re still dealing with this garbage.     

I hope Justus did, as he said, set rules going forward for his participants.  I hope he was disgusted by the word and everything it represents.  And, since my wife was kind enough to let him know in no uncertain terms why his handling of that incident was insufficient and offensive, I also hope he learned a little.  

5/10.  And 4 of those points go to JF Garrard.