notes from underground

I’ll make this a short update, but if I leave it any longer to talk about the webcomics panel and the keynote I will forget everything. The webcomics panel was, expectedly, semi-organized chaos, starting with Randy Milholland writing the following on the board:

All You Need to Know about Webcomics
1) Start a fight with someone else
2) Pete Abrams does bad things to puppies (WINK!)
3)Quit the Internet — twice
4) (boobs+cock joke)/wacky sidekick+sprites=OMG FUNNY!

It just went downhill from there.

Quotes
(note: RM=Randy Milholland, M=Mookie, TB=Tim Buckley [or Tuberculosis], JJ=Jeph Jacques, and C=Cristi, who came with Jeph)

On the distribution of dropouts and non-dropouts on the panel: “It’s a dropout sandwich!” - RM
On character inspiration: “Stupidity gives me an erection” - RM

“I only rape crystal meth addicts” - JJ
“I love Rape!” - M

“I used to be a keenspotter” - M
“You had it lanced?” - RM

“Some people liked it, some didn’t, but I don’t care” - TB, with Artistic Purity

“I wanna see Jesus Christ, Vampire Hunter” - Mookie

“Who writes Jesus in the first person?” - C
“Anne. Rice. Anne “JESUS CHRIST” Rice! - M

“My bladder is so spaciously vacant” - RM

“Badger Badger, a Love Story” - RM

“Mickey Mouse and Snape??” - JJ
“Show me your wong!” - RM, in a Mickey Mouse voice

audience - “Can you comment on internet fads?”
“SNAKES ON A PLANE, BITCH!” - JJ

There were actually a lot of good webcomic links thrown around, i think I caught most of them… I’ll update my links list later this week, and post some of them. In the meantime, the keynote speech!

Fiction and Why We Read it, Keynote Speech by George R. R. Martin!

“Most people read, few read for pleasure… we are a minority”
The keynote speech centered around what it is in fiction that keeps us interested, and why it is a necessary genre. Why do we remember it so well, get so involved, and what can we learn from the fact that we do?
What makes fiction memorable, he said, is not words. “For those who really love words… poetry is the ideal vehicle.” Perhaps a natural human need for stories, then. A part of us reads, quite understandably, to find out what happens next, but that’s not all. Human character is at the heart of fiction: the best fiction is based on good characters, and it is to understand character (both the characters themselves, and a more universal human character) that so many of us turn to fiction. That rang true to me, as I’ve always felt “great” literature is all character– we KNOW Raskalnikov, and even The Tale of Genji makes us feel the characters in a visceral way. To return to the speech:
Science Fiction, specifically, is the literature of ideas. Asimov’s first story was built on a small scientific nugget about the boiling point of water, but the story was really about two characters who felt they were going to die. It was a powerful vicarious experiance. That’s what fiction does. Memories are ephemeral, changing and fading as we age. In the end, “what are we but the sum total of our memories?” Human beings are masters of self-deception. Is a strong memory of an event from a book any less “real” than a distant memory of real life? Whether it happened or not, whether read, remembered or even misremembered, it is part of what makes us who we are. The people we meet in books, those characters, stay with us. “I won’t remember you,” he said, “but I remember Sam and Frodo… I remember these books and I’ve forfotten my life.” Which one is real? Does it matter?
His response to the accusations against fiction of “escapism,” as opposed to “ture” literature? “Bullshit. All fiction is inherently escapist… I prefer to use the term ‘vicarious experience.’” Everybody needs to escape, that’s part of who we are too. There are worse places to turn than books.

I will end with a quote. The most powerful thing Mr. Martin said was about reading fiction when he was growing up. He grew up in a small town. His family never went anywhere, but he read. “We may not have had a car,” he said, “but I had starships, and time machines.”