Minicon plans

[mrissa]

My Minicon schedule this year is light on formal plans, so if you want to find me, it'll probably be easier to call my cell or poke around looking for me rather than planning to see me after one of my panels, since there is only one, it's on Sunday, and I will be leaving after it for my Easter dinner. If you don't have my cell number, please ask on e-mail. (Note: several people have said, "I don't have your e-mail," lately. Of course you do. It's right there in my user info. It's also on my website, which is linked from my user info. But just in case, go ahead and use the gmail account that goes to marissalingen. I am not trying to be sneaky about this.)

Anyway, the panel in question is:

Careful the Wish You Make
Sunday 2:30
Veranda 3/4
Ruth Berman(m), Jane Yolen, Pat Wrede, Laramie Sasseville, Marissa Lingen

The line is from Sondheim's Into the Woods, and is followed by the assertion that "wishes come true, not free." From wishing upon a star to three wishes, we will discuss the techniques, rewards and perils of having one's wishes granted. What would you wish for?

If you have thoughts on wishes, by all means feel free to share them here.

Oh, also: I am not getting a hotel room Friday night this year. (I never get a hotel room Saturday night.) Being home and quiet and with my own housemammals at the end of the day seemed like a much better idea under the circumstances. I expect that I will be at the con Friday afternoon and well into the night, Saturday morning through night, Sunday late morning through approximately the end of the panel. Most of the con for me, really, since I am not a night owl and would be tottering off to bed long before laurel and fmsv do their ritual anyway.

Comments

[callunav.livejournal.com]

I have rarely played and never DM's Dungeons & Dragons, but I've always wanted someone to create and bestow the treasure item "Ring of Trivial Wishes." Periodically I'll use the same concept as an LJ meme interview questions if I happen to be curious or can't think of anything else: You can't get world peace from it, you can't use it to make sure all your loved ones live happily or that you get the job you desire most in the world. The only wishes the ring will grant are the ones that don't change anything significant.

And yes, I know this brings up just how arguable the concept of significance is; that's part of the point, though not the whole thing. But it's really fun watching people try to come up with something which *they* believe meets the criteria. I think we all wish, mildly, for a dozen trivial things a day: I wish there would be a break in the traffic soon so I could turn left. I wish the dishes dried a little faster in the rack. I wish the rain had held off until after I had to go out to post the letter. But in the abstract, somehow there's a tension created by trying to think of something good enough to spend one of three magical wishes on, and something that truly is trivial.

As for non-trivial magical wishing - ever since I learned to think critically at all, I have mostly bought into a Monkey's Paw paradigm. I think any reasonably imaginative person can thwart wishes, but I admire the story-teller who can bring out the full horror, and keep the contrast between the glitter of the idea of wishes and the dark and sticky reality (if that's the paradigm in use). One of the reasons the story of the monkey's paw is so very good is that they don't open the door.

[mrissa.livejournal.com]

For me there is a difference between the stories in which there is a malign influence twisting whatever you wish and the stories in which the whole thing is neutral and it's like writing a computer program.

[dd-b.livejournal.com]

Wait, computers don't malignly twist whatever I write?

You sure?

[mrissa.livejournal.com]

Neutrality is quite dangerous enough.

[callunav.livejournal.com]

For me, it's more about the nature of trying to use wishes to change reality. It's just part of my operating system: the fae are amoral, the means are the ends, magical wishes twist in your hand and cut you given the slightest opportunity - and there's always an opportunity. ("You can't help people with wishing. You can only help them with skin.")

[skylarker.livejournal.com]

Hey! I'm on that panel, too. I'll be interested in whatever comments are made here.
I've been rereading the Andrew Lang collections of fairy tales - and before that the Arabian Nights, and have been struck by how ethno-centric the moralizing of wishes can be.

[akitrom.livejournal.com]

The "wishes" I like best are the ones that work like "answered prayers". If you wish for riches, it's not like a ton of coins suddenly appears around you. It's more like, five minutes later, a registered letter arrives informing you that you've inheirited some sizable fortune from an obcure older relative. The letter was mailed days ago, and would have arrived even if you hadn't made that wish.

Or would it have?

[mrissa.livejournal.com]

I figure any wish fulfillment based on somebody's death is not in the category of happy wish stories.

[dd-b.livejournal.com]

Could be for a lot of people, though.

Either in that the person who died is thoroughly malign, or that their death, while sad, is having happy rather than sad outcomes in an area where there's a choice (so kinda melancholy, but better than bad + bad).

[mrissa.livejournal.com]

I have difficulty buying into "he/she was going to die anyway" in all but the most extreme cases.

[dd-b.livejournal.com]

Especially for a fantasy setting, I take death as a given (even for evil wizards). But yeah, chopping many years or decades off is a big deal, not to be taken lightly.

[akitrom.livejournal.com]

Who said anything about dying? Obscure relatives can take a vow of simplicity as they enter a monestery in the Mountains of Elde, or can divest themselves of all foreign titles and deeds as they assume the post of Queen's Chamberlain.

But I like those wishes best that leave causality bare to suspicion rather than break immediate physical laws. That use the Magic of Least Resistance. (What's the simplest thing that has to happen, to make the wish come true?)

If Character A uses a wish to protect unhorsed Character B from taking any damage from Character C's onrushing charge with couched lance, it makes more sense to have an unlocked paddock of sheep come wandering out and block the charge, rather than have Character B suddenly gain super-heroic invulnerability.

Even simpler would be to have Character C's horse fall dead.

Even simpler would be to have Character B fall dead.

[markgritter.livejournal.com]

The Fables collection I'm currently re-reading has a djinn. While the djinn is too powerful to counteract directly, the "good guys" manage to interfere with the process of wish-making so that the villain wishes disaster upon himself.

One of the narrative threads in 52 is about a wish, too--- a character wishes to be reunited with his dead wife, which works out in the usual way. But he drags a lot of plot along with him in the process.

My takeaway point from these two examples is that once you're in an area in which wish-fulfillment technology exists you may not have as much free will as you thought--- your wishes may just be carrying out somebody else's desires.

[dd-b.livejournal.com]

The usual way for reuniting with dead people is zombification, yes?

One could also have fun, since most of these wish scenarios exist in a context where there's an afterlife, with the live one being killed and sent to the afterlife where they're reunited with their wife. Possibly in hell, if you want to be really nasty about it (and if the context has a hell available).

[reveritas.livejournal.com]

(What do you mean by "Ruth Berman(m)"?)

[dd-b.livejournal.com]

The Minicon programming grid means that Ruth is moderating this panel by that.

[reveritas.livejournal.com]

Ohh got it. I thought maybe there was an alternate spelling of the last name! :)

[reveritas.livejournal.com]

(Also, *waves* ... I met you at a brewpub in Palo Alto with Mris the other year)

[dd-b.livejournal.com]

Yes, that was quite a crowd!

[mmerriam.livejournal.com]

Is the programming grid posted someplace? Because I can't seem to find it, and everyone is posting their final panels.

[dd-b.livejournal.com]

Huh, I really thought it was. But I can't find it through the normal web page.

[mrissa.livejournal.com]

I have no idea; I only posted this one because I saw your posting and remembered to go talk to dreamshark.

[mmerriam.livejournal.com]

I'll send her an email.

[pameladean]

Nobody's told me anything either.

P.

[reveritas.livejournal.com]

You could say something about horses, and ponies. Other than that I got nothin'. But have fun at Minicon!

[jry.livejournal.com]

Over on the Shadow Unit (http://shadowunit.org) message boards they did the twisted wishes thing as a game (http://www.shadowunit.org/smf/index.php?topic=552.0) for a while. Might be an interesting quick read (little numbers on the left at the bottom of the page take you to following pages in the thread. The next/prev links take you to the next thread, FYI.) Not a very happy game.

[mrissa.livejournal.com]

But Shadow Unit is usually about the happy-happy-fun times!

[diatryma.livejournal.com]

There's the Open Source Wish Project, or there was at one point, which was about refining wishes until the genie ran out of loopholes. I haven't looked at it much, though.

I heard once about a Soviet children's book about a girl who got a flower with seven petals, each granting a wish. Her first three wishes were selfish and each required a wish to undo/get her out of the bad situation they landed her in, and the seventh was unselfish and so turned out all right.

[mrissa.livejournal.com]

I like the one about the sausage with the three wishes, because then at least they get a sausage.

[skylarker.livejournal.com]

I have mixed reactions to stories in which the results of wishes seem to be used to enforce some system of morality. I'd rather see wishes as more neutral, like physical laws. There would be consequences, but they would depend on something other than human moral systems, something weirder.