Sometimes the most life-changing things get started when you have nothing left to lose. There was another time when we didn't know if there would be another Penguicon: the first Penguicon. What do we have to lose? Here are some of the things you say when you have nothing left to lose.

I look through photos of all the past Penguicons, and I see people liking themselves. Liking each other. And uncomplicatedly touching each other.

Most of them liked to be photographed. Most of them will flirt with you in a room party.

Are you wondering why we would need that right now? Every good thing starts from that in our civic lives. Every bad thing comes from a lack of it in our civic lives. People touching each other, liking themselves, liking each other. That means they show off! They have good-natured competitions! They have good-natured disagreements, sometimes passionate, but usually backed by friendly curiosity. I don't see photos of people acting like they would act if they thought they were weak, or helpless, or hopeless. They're smart or fun or sexy or all of the above, and they know it.

There are a lot of movements we need, and all the useful ones will be based on what I see in these photos. Those are the movements imaginative enough to move toward something new and not away from supposed least-bad alternatives. "Away" is not a direction. Only toward.

Movements based on other things, such as militance, which is the infliction of fear, or penitence, which is the infliction of guilt, might sound more badass at first. They have a dismal track record as methods of improving the world. If you tell people that the world deserves to be burned to the ground, they'll burn it to the ground to oppose you. And if you hear that and you're looking for who around you is to blame, your focus is on the wrong place! Because again, "away" is not a direction. You are smarter or funnier or sexier or warmer than you know, or all of the above, and you can do better than "away".

A popular resistance, a successful resistance, and most importantly a durable resistance, is built by people who like themselves. Who like each other. Who physically touch, in person. Throughout history, this has been the force behind the good and successful social movements full of courageous people. Liking themselves. Liking each other. Touching comfortably as an expression of trust.

To put a fine point on it, I'm looking fiction authors on Worldcon panels right in their eyes, without blinking, and I'm saying, if you think being a good person requires us to be miserable, or to sit down and shut up except to apologize, then your political praxis is the same-old-same-old, and your resistance to the status quo is dead on arrival. Having said that, I will pay no further attention to it, and turn toward what works.

To make Penguicon possible, the people I see in these photos would pool together to sleep six to a hotel room if they had to, as long as they knew two of them and the rest were vouched for. That's not a hypothetical, I'm saying it's what we did! Someone who still would do that in 2026 is who I would trust to hide people in their attic.

Either what's going to come next for Penguicon is the most exciting thing we've ever done in years, or we go out with a bang and it's still the most exciting thing we've ever done in years, and then there's a lot that gets freed up to do what comes after Penguicon. And after all... that's how Penguicon was born to begin with. Either way, find your people, like yourself, like each other, and hold them close. There are other Penguicons you can look back on and think, well, you'll hit another one. Whether it's the last hurrah or not, you do not want to look back and say you weren't at Penguicon 2026.