| DAY | START | END | LOCATION | TITLE | DESCRIPTION | PANELISTS | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Sunday | 12:00am | Kensington | Chain Chronicle – The Light of Haecceitas | This is the story of the Chain Chronicle, a book that describes everything that happens in the world. The citizens of the remote continent of Yggd once thought that there was nothing beyond their continent. | Film | ||
| Sunday | 5:00am | Kensington | The Ancient Magus’ Bride | Chise Hatori, 15 years old. Lost, without hope, and without family, she is bought for money – not by another person, but by a non-human sorcerer named Elias. Though she hesitates, she begins life anew as his apprentice and future wife. | Film | ||
| Sunday | 9:00 AM | 1:00 PM | The Chessboard | The Bear Essentials | Netherstorm A bear has been causing all sorts of havoc near your local village. Time for some heroes to come forth and deal with this problem! | We Hate Bards | |
| Sunday | 9:00 AM | 1:00 PM | The Chessboard | Bootlegging Gone Bad | Call of Cthulhu (7th Edition) The Caldwell boys set up a good operation in the northern woods of Massachusetts. Your boss, Doctor Bobbin, the head of the local organized bootlegging operation thinks it’s time you pay them a visit and integrate their otherworldly brew into his supply chain. What could go wrong?” | We Hate Bards | |
| Sunday | 9:00 AM | 11:00 AM | The Chessboard | Dreamchaser | If you could live out any story, any moment—what would you experience? Lead a Rebellion • Befriend a Dragon • Become a New York Times Best Seller • Race to the Stars • Find Dad’s Pants…Let Dreamchaser adapt to you! What are you destined to achieve? Join in on a collaborative story game experience where every player has a say on who and what our story involves. Chase your dreams—your goals! | We Hate Bards | |
| Sunday | 10:00 AM | 10:50 AM | Charlevoix | Missing and Deleted Scenes in the Age of the Internet | On the advice of artist John Tenniel, Lewis Carroll dropped an entire chapter from Through The Looking Glass. That chapter was almost lost to history until a galley turned up in a Sotheby’s auction. These days, writers have a lot more options for their missing scenes, including sharing them as promotional freebies on their websites or including them in newsletters or crowdfunding platforms. Can scenes that ultimately didn’t strengthen the work still merit sharing with readers? What makes a missing scene a good candidate for sharing with readers vs. consignment to the recycling bin of history? | Bryon Quertermous, David D. Levine, Sara Dobie Bauer, Jim Butcher | |
| Sunday | 10:00 AM | 10:50 AM | Club Lounge | Kaffeeklatsch with Fan GOH Nisi Shawl | Join our Fan Guest of Honor for coffee, tea, and conversation. Limited to 10 participants. Sign up at OPS. | Nisi Shawl | |
| Sunday | 10:00 AM | 10:50 AM | Isle Royale | Poetry In Novels | Carroll’s Alice in Wonderland and Through The Looking Glass include lengthy poems, placing them in a long tradition of long-form fiction that incorporates poetry into the work. How does writing poems for prose fiction differ from writing poems that stand alone? What distinct techniques does it require? Where do poems within stories exist in the landscape of genre poetry today? | Amal El-Mohtar, Clif Flynt, Jeff Pryor, Josef Matulich, John Winkelman, Mari Ness | |
| Sunday | 10:00 AM | 10:50 AM | Leelanaw | Fandom in the Family | You grew up with fandom being a part of your life and now you want to involve the kids. But making them terrified of weeping angels might not be the best way to go. Come find out how to make sure your kids become productive, insightful, and best of all, nerd class citizens. | James Breakwell, Jackie (Literary Escapism), Stacey Filak, Vanessa Ricci-Thode | |
| Sunday | 10:00 AM | 10:50 AM | KidFusion | Wake Up Yoga | Learn some yoga poses to get your day started | KidFusion Staff | |
| Sunday | 10:00am | Kensington | RWBY | RWBY is a story that focuses on a group of four girls in their first year at a legendary academy where they will learn to fight monsters. | Film | ||
| Sunday | 11:00 AM | 11:50 AM | Charlevoix | Heroes and Mental Health | When writing mentally ill heroes , authors not only have to portray characters with sensitivity and the right amount of realism , but also work against social stigmas that will have their characters labelled as whiny, dramatic, wooden, or otherwise unlikeable. Who are our favorite mentally ill heroes, and how do authors bring them to life in an engaging and sympathetic way? | Dominik Parisien, Jim C. Hines, Mishell Baker, Mur Lafferty, Sarah Gailey, Shweta Adhyam | |
| Sunday | 11:00 AM | 11:50 AM | Club Lounge | Kaffeeklatsch with Media GOH James Breakwell | Join our Media Guest of Honor for coffee, tea, and conversation. Limited to 10 participants. Sign up at OPS. | James Breakwell | |
| Sunday | 11:00 AM | 11:50 AM | Isle Royale | Reading: David D. Levine and Stephanie Morris | Reading: David D. Levine and Stephanie Morris | David D. Levine, Stephanie Morris | |
| Sunday | 11:00 AM | 11:50 AM | Keweenaw | Dressing A Fictional World | They say clothes make the man , but they also tell us a lot about his physical and social world. Come help a team of writers design a fictional world and determine how people in that world would dress , based on their climate , culture , technology , and resources. This is an audience-participation panel. | Annalee Flower Horne, Elizabeth Shack, Jessi Cole Jackson, Denise M. Beucler | |
| Sunday | 11:00 AM | 11:50 AM | Marquette | Tom Smith and Luke Ski Do Whatever! | Beloved bard of dorkness and uber-legend Tom Smith will bring his guitar. Barely-tolerated nerdy comedy musician and “Dr. Demento Show” dominator Luke Ski will show up with his iPod full of backing tracks plugged into speaker. What happens beyond that is anybody’s guess, including Tom’s and Luke’s. Think of it like one of those escape rooms. Your job: ESCAPE! Warning: Event may contain lethal amounts of puns, schticking, side-tangents, and continual non-stop pluggery for websites such as the Funny Music Project (http://www.thefump.com). | Luke Ski, Tom Smith | |
| Sunday | 11:00 AM | 11:50 AM | Petoskey | Your Cake Is In Another Castle | Carroll’s Through The Looking Glass sends Alice into a chessboard-world where she’s told that if she crosses the entire board, she’ll be crowned queen. It’s not until she reaches this goal that she learns it’s not what she really needs: the goal of chess isn’t to promote a pawn; it’s to put the king in check. When does moving the goalposts on a character feel like a satisfying next step, and when does it break the compact with the reader? | Amy Sundberg, Ken Schrader, Matthew Bin, Ryan Van Loan, Tracy Townsend | |
| Sunday | 11:00 AM | 11:50 AM | Saugatuck | Goodnight Sweet Cassini | On September 9 , 2017 , Cassini began its final orbit around Saturn. Let’s talk about the data collected and wax philosophic about our late and great satelite. | Bob Trembley, Connie Trembley, Karen Burnham | |
| Sunday | 11:00 AM | 11:50 AM | St. Clair | Origami for Adults and Kids | Join Lar deSousa in the art of fannish paper folding! | Lar deSouza | |
| Sunday | 11:00 AM | 11:50 AM | KidFusion | Sunday Morning Anime | Come and watch youth-appropriate anime friends. | KidFusion Staff | |
| Sunday | 11:00 AM | TeenFusion | Lunch Break | ||||
| Sunday | 11:00 AM | 12:00 PM | The Chessboard | sushi go party | Party platter of mega maki, super sashimi, and endless edamame. You still earn points by picking winning sushi combos, but now you can customize each game by choosing à la carte from a menu of more than twenty delectable dishes. What’s more, up to eight players can join in on the sushi-feast. Let the good times roll! | William K | |
| Sunday | 11:00 AM | 11:30 AM | The Chessboard | Santorini | Santorini is an accessible strategy game, simple enough for an elementary school classroom while aiming to provide gameplay depth and content for hardcore gamers to explore, The rules are simple. Each turn consists of 2 steps: Move and Build | Jason M | |
| Sunday | 11:00 AM | 1:00 PM | The Chessboard | Dreamchaser | If you could live out any story, any moment—what would you experience? Lead a Rebellion • Befriend a Dragon • Become a New York Times Best Seller • Race to the Stars • Find Dad’s Pants…Let Dreamchaser adapt to you! What are you destined to achieve? Join in on a collaborative story game experience where every player has a say on who and what our story involves. Chase your dreams—your goals! | We Hate Bards | |
| Sunday | 12:00 PM | 12:50 PM | Interlochen | The Setting As Character | In Science Fiction and Fantasy , settings can literally come alive–be it via the talking flowers of Through The Looking Glass or the rage of Peter Quill’s creepy dad-planet in Guardians of the Galaxy Vol 2. In Ann Leckie’s Imperial Radch universe where ships have minds, main characters can be both people and places at the same time. Are living settings a science fiction/fantasy extension of the classic “Hero Vs. Nature” story? How do they exist in conversation with real-world beliefs about whether the world around us has a will of its own? | A. T. Greenblatt, Cassandra Morgan, David John Baker, Ferrett Steinmetz, Suzanne Church | |
| Sunday | 12:00 PM | 12:50 PM | Isle Royale | The Robots are Here! | 2018 is the year that robots officially took over. This panel will serve a guide on how to best appeal to your robot overlords. | Annalee Newitz, Curtis Potterveld, Tracy Townsend | |
| Sunday | 12:00 PM | 12:50 PM | Manitou | Do Not Be Satisfied With Stories: Narrative Structure and Expectations | A short PowerPoint lecture (all images or short clips! no boring text slides!) on how the expectations we bring to a story influence how we engage with the story, with a particular emphasis on how opening paragraphs (and opening sequences in films) often rely on familiarity and cultural knowledge to draw us in. Focus on science fiction and fantasy stories. | Kate Elliott | |
| Sunday | 12:00 PM | 12:50 PM | Petoskey | Good Days and Bad Days In Narrative Arcs | Disabilities in fiction are often displayed as binary and static: characters with wheelchairs are completely unable to stand or walk. Blind and Deaf characters have complete and bilateral vision/hearing loss. Depressed characters are barely functional. In the real world, disability exists on a broad spectrum, and a person’s place on that spectrum is rarely static. Disabled people have good days and bad days and experience a range of effects from their disability. Some people are able some days and disabled other days. How do we portray these more realistic ranges of ability and disability in fiction without the characters’ changing capabilities coming across as a plot contrivance? | Dominik Parisien, Merrie Haskell, Mishell Baker, Yanni Kuznia, Annalee Flower Horne | |
| Sunday | 12:00 PM | 12:50 PM | Saugatuck | Strong Female Characters and the Protags Who Harass Them | Princess Leia. Art3mis from Ready Player One. Zoe Saldana’s Uhura. Fiction is full of “strong female characters” who have to endure harassment campaigns from alleged heroes. In many cases they end up falling in love with their harassers. Their “strength” exists to present an obstacle to the male protagonist trying to conquer her, or as a foil for his wit. How do we create female characters whose strength serves their story, and write romances that portray female characters as respected equals rather than prizes to be won? | Cherie M. Priest, Delilah S. Dawson, Monica Valentinelli, Natalie Luhrs, Shweta Adhyam | |
| Sunday | 12:00 PM | KidFusion | AFTERNOON BREAK | KidFusion is closed for one hour in the afternoon. | |||
| Sunday | 12:00 PM | 12:50 PM | TeenFusion | Puzzlemania | Come make art or jewelry with puzzle pieces! | ||
| Sunday | 12:00 PM | 1:00 PM | The Chessboard | Samara | Travel back through history to a settlement called Samara, where you lead a group of builders. At the start of the game, they can build only a sandcastle, cave or huts. For more complex buildings, you first invest time in skills, strength, or new workers. Building special projects gives you benefits or hurts all your rivals. In the end you want to have the most prestigious buildings. | Jim S | |
| Sunday | 1:00 PM | 1:50 PM | Charlevoix | Q&A: Jim Butcher | Q&A: Jim Butcher | Jim Butcher | |
| Sunday | 1:00 PM | 1:50 PM | Interlochen | Hopepunk in the Age Of Resistance | Author Alexandra Rowland defines hopepunk as the opposite of grimdark: “Hopepunk says that kindness and softness doesn’t equal weakness, and that in this world of brutal cynicism and nihilism, being kind is a political act. An act of rebellion. Hopepunk says that genuinely and sincerely caring about something, anything, requires bravery and strength.” What are the stories that inspire us to reject cynicism and fight for the good in this broken world? | Brandon Crilly, Izzy Wasserstein, Michael J. DeLuca, Nisi Shawl, Stacey Filak | |
| Sunday | 1:00 PM | 1:50 PM | Isle Royale | Stories on Game Boards | The Chessboard in Lewis Carroll’s Through The Looking Glass makes a natural story setting, because every game of chess is a story of a battle between two warring factions and a journey across the board. Even outside of classic story games, like RPGs , we’re currently experiencing a renaissance of board and video games that use gaming as a form of literature. What makes games unique as a storytelling medium? What can you do as a storyteller with a game that you can’t do with prose fiction, comics, or film? | Andrea Phillips, K. Lynne O’Connor, Kelsi Morris, Monica Valentinelli, Nathan Rockwood | |
| Sunday | 1:00 PM | 1:50 PM | Leelanaw | Imagining A Future Without Police | Policing is so deeply-rooted in our ideas about society that calls to abolish policing can seem disconnected from reality. Won’t there always be bad guys? How would we enforce the rule of law? Even future utopias like Star Trek still have police. But alternative methods of justice exist in the world. What would a city, space station, or extra-planetary colony of the future without police look like? How could they build and maintain collaborative instead of adversarial justice systems? | Addie J. King, Angus Watson, Carl Engle-Laird, Pablo Defendini, Teresa Nielsen Hayden | |
| Sunday | 1:00 PM | 1:50 PM | Marquette | Whose Cartoon Is It Anyway? | Whose cartoon is It Anyway? It’s the Cartoon Network’s! The audience picks a cartoon plot, and artists jam to figure out what happens next! Comedy GoH Luke Ski narrates the story so that it makes sense. Or at least cartoon-sense. | Emily Zelasko, Lar deSouza , Matt Feazell, Luke Ski | |
| Sunday | 1:00 PM | 1:50 PM | Petoskey | Analogue Media in the Digital Age | Paper, vinyl, and film, oh my! What are the unique advantages to analogue media, and what’s just a deeply ingrained sense of how media “should” be? Is it not a book without the paper smell, or a song without the soft crackle of a needle on vinyl? | David Klecha, Gail Cross, John Winkelman | |
| Sunday | 1:00 PM | 1:50 PM | Saugatuck | To Mars! | NASA is finally ready to make humanity’s dream of sending people to Mars a reality. What challenges need to be overcome , and what is ready to go! | Bob Trembley, Connie Trembley, David D. Levine, Karen Burnham | |
| Sunday | 1:00 PM | 1:50 PM | KidFusion | Simple Science | Explore chemical reactions by making a lava lamp to take home | KidFusion Staff | |
| Sunday | 1:00 PM | 1:50 PM | TeenFusion | Tea Time with Kate Elliott | Join Kate Elliott in a madly entertaining panel full of tea and laughter and hats! | Kate Elliott | |
| Sunday | 1:00 PM | 2:00 PM | The Chessboard | New York Slice | You’ve just been given a shot at being the head chef at the prestigious New York Slice pizza parlor. Now you and your fellow pizza chef wannabes have to make the most amazing pizzas…one slice at a time! | Jim S | |
| Sunday | 1:00 PM | 2:00 PM | The Chessboard | King of tokyo | You play mutant monsters, gigantic robots, and strange aliens—all of whom are destroying Tokyo and whacking each other in order to become the one and only King of Tokyo. | Jason M | |
| Sunday | 1:00 PM | 4:00 PM | The Chessboard | Race for the galaxy | Players build galactic civilizations by playing game cards in front of them that represent worlds or technical and social developments. Some worlds allow players to produce goods, which can be consumed later to gain either card draws or victory points when the appropriate technologies are available to them. These are mainly provided by the developments and worlds that are not able to produce, but the fancier production worlds also give these bonuses. | Mike D | |
| Sunday | 1:00 PM | 4:00 PM | The Chessboard | Goblin Well- | Join We Hate Bards as we bring Confusion 2018 to a close with one of our legendary Goblin Well Games. Poorly thought out characters, random dungeons, and the deaths, oh so many deaths. | We Hate Bards | |
| Sunday | 1:00 PM | 4:00 PM | The Chessboard | Goblin Well- | Join We Hate Bards as we bring Confusion 2018 to a close with one of our legendary Goblin Well Games. Poorly thought out characters, random dungeons, and the deaths, oh so many deaths. | We Hate Bards | |
| Sunday | 1:00 PM | 4:00 PM | The Chessboard | Goblin Well- | Join We Hate Bards as we bring Confusion 2018 to a close with one of our legendary Goblin Well Games. Poorly thought out characters, random dungeons, and the deaths, oh so many deaths. | We Hate Bards | |
| Sunday | 2:00 PM | 2:50 PM | Charlevoix | A Novel Look at the Short Story | Short stories require a different approach to pacing , character , world-building , exposition , and plot than longer works. Let’s explore the tools we use to convey important information to the reader when we have a lot fewer words to do it with. | A. T. Greenblatt, Amal El-Mohtar, Jessi Cole Jackson, Lucy A. Snyder, Scott H. Andrews | |
| Sunday | 2:00 PM | 2:50 PM | Keweenaw | The Liar , The Traitor , And The Reader | The Red Queen in Through The Looking Glass manages to deceive Alice without ever telling a lie. Betrayal tales are as old as fiction, and betrayers can make fascinating villains–and heroes. But characters who can’t be trusted require delicate handling. Readers often feel that protagonists were stupid not to see a betrayal coming. What does it take to get readers to identify with the deceitful–or the deceived? Who are our favorite betrayers in science fiction and fantasy, and why do they work? | Cassandra Morgan, -E, Dyrk Ashton, K. Lynne O’Connor, Jason Sizemore | |
| Sunday | 2:00 PM | 2:50 PM | KidFusion | Family Charades! | Kids–bring your parents along for a friendly game of charades to close out the weekend | Selina Firecat | |
| Sunday | 2:00 PM | 3:50 PM | TeenFusion | Open Room | |||
| Sunday | 2:00 PM | 2:45 PM | The Chessboard | Chrononaughts | Each player becomes a time traveler, with a unique identity and a secret mission. During the game, players travel backwards and forwards through history, doing all those things people have always dreamed of using a time machine to do | Cheryl O | |
| Sunday | 3:00 PM | 3:50 PM | Big Top | Closing Ceremonies | Come say goodbye to our Guests of Honor and Special Guests, and learn what we might have in store for you for next year! | Amy Sexsmith, Annalee Newitz, Gail Cross, James Breakwell, Jim Butcher, Kate Elliott, Luke Ski, Nisi Shawl | |
| Sunday | 3:00 PM | KidFusion | KidFusion Closes | Thanks for another great KidFusion year! | |||
| Sunday | 3:00 PM | 4:00 PM | The Chessboard | Hey That’s my fish | Players want to catch as many fish as possible with their waddle of penguins. Each turn, a player moves one penguin in a straight line over hex-shaped ice tiles with 1, 2 or 3 fish on them. The player then collects the hex from where the penguin started its movement from the table, thereby creating a gap which penguins can’t cross on future turns. When a penguin can’t move, it’s removed from play with its owner claiming the tile on which it stands. The player who collects the most fish wins. | Cheryl O | |
| Sunday | 4:00 PM | 4:50 PM | Big Top | Feedback Session | Give the ConCom compliments, ask questions, provide concerns. Review the con experience with the all-volunteer concom and staff, and find out how to join in the fun of planning ConFusion for next year! | Amy Sexsmith, Anna Carey, Brian Decker, Cylithria Dubois, David Klecha, Eric Guy, Allison Anderson | |
| Sunday | 5:00 PM | 5:50 PM | ConSuite | Dead Dog | Ring out the end of Friendship is ConFusion with the last of the last. We will be open until the food or our patience runs out! |