biggest take-aways from the not-quite-portland martha wells "platform decay" signing:
1. she takes a lot of inspiration from her father, who was a wwii POW in a nazi camp apparently
2. someone brought up a terrific point about the similarity between murderbot and incarcerated people (and is trying to get the books into the hands of prisoners they work with! so cool!); martha hadn't made that explicit connection herself but it was still a cool moment. truly the power of art there!
3. some weirdo probably-cis guy ended the q&a with a horrible question that he/him'd murderbot and asked if it would fall in love with a "female" bot (?????) and martha said murderbot is already in a romantic relationship with ART, although she said it wasn't romantic the way humans would define it and certainly wasn't sexual. (altho she is aware of the fanfiction and finds it funny, and reassured everyone she has been in Fandom enough that nothing anyone could do would shock her, haha.)
4. someone asked a question about preservation as a "communist utopia," and the age gap (a gen x woman versus a younger-trending audience) was pretty apparent since the soviet union and American cultural attitudes towards that very much color her thoughts on the word "communist." But she made a pretty powerful point about preservation not qualifying as a "utopia" considering their attitude towards bots, and she identified it more as "hopepunk or solarpunk." and pointed out that dystopias are... well, we are in one in the US.
Overall she really is just so charming and cool. And most people in the audience were thoughtful and respectful!
