Finncon 2009
I have passed yet another fandom rite. Last month I was at my first con ever. And I learned that it was
Europe's largest science fiction & fantasy event.
It’s strange that I haven’t been that well informed about Finncons. I mean, I must have read about them at some point. The Finncon was in Jyväskylä in 2001, and I lived there, for God’s sake! I have always followed scifi and fantasy news, I should have noticed. But I guess I have always skipped everything con related as “not my thing” without really stopping to think about it.
Anyway, this year I finally noticed the Finncon, and attended. I only went on Saturday afternoon, and it was an impulsive last minute decision “hey, it’s a weekend, I have nothing interesting to do, and there’s that con”. One of my better decisions, that.
It was wonderful to just hang around, buy books, glance through interesting manga (I was inexplicably fascinated by the Manga Messias) - and just feel that you belong there. I have always been a solitary fan, mostly communicating with other fans online only and actually having just a few properly fannish real life friends. It hadn’t occurred to me earlier that it could be fun to actually meet other fans. (Yeah, I am a bit slow. Or perhaps just truly hermit-like.)
Most of all I was delighted at two fan fiction panels. Although I appreciate the wide spectrum of anything fannish, fan fiction is my home base - my basic approach to almost all fiction is fanfictive (sorry, people, I invented a word and now I like to use it all the time; I just mean that reading stories makes me generate new stories) - and I am ridiculously pleased that we have formed our own niche in the Finnish fandom. It was heart-warming to see the hall full of people listening fan fiction panels. I sighted young people in audience, and got all seasoned veteran in my mind: “at that age I wrote Lethal Weapon stories on margins of my math notebooks with a broken pencil - these kids have computers and fic archives, they don’t know how easy they have it”. Equally inspiring it was to spot other older fans there - always nice not to be the only properly adult. Perhaps some of those fellow adults had started with school notebooks margins and school pencils like me?
So, those two fan fiction panels. The first was about fan fiction and morality - discussion about copy right laws, real person fiction, approved content for fan fiction. The other was “Ten years of slash” - an overview of trends and phenomena in slash 1999-2009.
The “morality panel” had a scattered subject, and would have benefit from narrowing the theme a bit. The copy right discussion didn’t work out quite as well as one could have wished, but wasn’t a failure either. (Still, it would be cool to have a heavy specialist panel on that issue: pirate party activist, copy right lawyer, well informed fans from different niches of the fandom. Let’s organize one?) Talk about RPS, warnings in fan fiction, morals of writing dark fics, incest, etc went on more smoothly, and was interesting to listen to.
Ten years of slash was simply fun. Made me realized how the time has flown. It was 11 years ago that I finally found what this internet thing was, and subsequently found fan fiction. As I love to point out: I stumbled on slash on my first web surf ever. It only took perhaps 15 minutes. “Let’s see, my friend told me to use Altavista to search for stuff - I wonder if there’s anything about Sherlock Holmes out there - oh, yeah, interesting, clickety clicks on the links - hm, Sacrilege sounds provocative - what the hell is slash? - woah, there are people who write the same kind of stories I do!” The panel reminded me of the fandoms that have been popular, the various internet mediums in use, the major kerfluffles happened, and so on.
That panel gave me a few tips to older and newer shows that I could perhaps check out. Smallville and Stargate Atlantis, for example. And the first season of Merlin I watched pretty soon after the Finncon. After some alluring references to the show I just had to see what it was about. (I wasn’t quite as excited as I thought I would be. I liked BBC’s recent Robin Hood series more than Merlin.)
Viewing fandom history as a time line, I became aware of the fact that I am hardly ever interested in the current favourites. I always find fandoms a bit late, and seriously, I prefer it that way. It’s easier to deal with a closed canon than an open one. It’s exceptional that right now I am reasonably well up-to-date with several American shows: Supernatural, House, Heroes and Numb3rs. And I read fan fiction, and I read spoilers (especially just before the season begins! I usually start avoiding spoilers only before the big plot twists of the season), and I do speculate a lot. I am still not big on participating much on those.
All in all, the con was fun, and I definitely decided to go to the Finncon in Jyväskylä next year. If possible, I’ll be there the whole weekend. I don’t have enough fannish activities in my life. And it’s nice to have a reason to visit Jyväskylä again. There’s a couple of dear friends living there and other attractions: Antiquarian Book Shop Päijänne, University library, a lovely film shop Videodivari and
a proper cinema.
Animecon won’t be arranged together with Finncon next year, so the crowds shouldn’t be so overwhelming then. A bit smaller event sounds invitating for me.
Finally, one Finncon report rec. Cheryl Morgan cherylmmorgan (“a permanent guest” (as someone titled her this year) has written about earlier ones, too. Her commentary about the 2009 Finncon is thorough and interesting.
Europe's largest science fiction & fantasy event.
It’s strange that I haven’t been that well informed about Finncons. I mean, I must have read about them at some point. The Finncon was in Jyväskylä in 2001, and I lived there, for God’s sake! I have always followed scifi and fantasy news, I should have noticed. But I guess I have always skipped everything con related as “not my thing” without really stopping to think about it.
Anyway, this year I finally noticed the Finncon, and attended. I only went on Saturday afternoon, and it was an impulsive last minute decision “hey, it’s a weekend, I have nothing interesting to do, and there’s that con”. One of my better decisions, that.
It was wonderful to just hang around, buy books, glance through interesting manga (I was inexplicably fascinated by the Manga Messias) - and just feel that you belong there. I have always been a solitary fan, mostly communicating with other fans online only and actually having just a few properly fannish real life friends. It hadn’t occurred to me earlier that it could be fun to actually meet other fans. (Yeah, I am a bit slow. Or perhaps just truly hermit-like.)
Most of all I was delighted at two fan fiction panels. Although I appreciate the wide spectrum of anything fannish, fan fiction is my home base - my basic approach to almost all fiction is fanfictive (sorry, people, I invented a word and now I like to use it all the time; I just mean that reading stories makes me generate new stories) - and I am ridiculously pleased that we have formed our own niche in the Finnish fandom. It was heart-warming to see the hall full of people listening fan fiction panels. I sighted young people in audience, and got all seasoned veteran in my mind: “at that age I wrote Lethal Weapon stories on margins of my math notebooks with a broken pencil - these kids have computers and fic archives, they don’t know how easy they have it”. Equally inspiring it was to spot other older fans there - always nice not to be the only properly adult. Perhaps some of those fellow adults had started with school notebooks margins and school pencils like me?
So, those two fan fiction panels. The first was about fan fiction and morality - discussion about copy right laws, real person fiction, approved content for fan fiction. The other was “Ten years of slash” - an overview of trends and phenomena in slash 1999-2009.
The “morality panel” had a scattered subject, and would have benefit from narrowing the theme a bit. The copy right discussion didn’t work out quite as well as one could have wished, but wasn’t a failure either. (Still, it would be cool to have a heavy specialist panel on that issue: pirate party activist, copy right lawyer, well informed fans from different niches of the fandom. Let’s organize one?) Talk about RPS, warnings in fan fiction, morals of writing dark fics, incest, etc went on more smoothly, and was interesting to listen to.
Ten years of slash was simply fun. Made me realized how the time has flown. It was 11 years ago that I finally found what this internet thing was, and subsequently found fan fiction. As I love to point out: I stumbled on slash on my first web surf ever. It only took perhaps 15 minutes. “Let’s see, my friend told me to use Altavista to search for stuff - I wonder if there’s anything about Sherlock Holmes out there - oh, yeah, interesting, clickety clicks on the links - hm, Sacrilege sounds provocative - what the hell is slash? - woah, there are people who write the same kind of stories I do!” The panel reminded me of the fandoms that have been popular, the various internet mediums in use, the major kerfluffles happened, and so on.
That panel gave me a few tips to older and newer shows that I could perhaps check out. Smallville and Stargate Atlantis, for example. And the first season of Merlin I watched pretty soon after the Finncon. After some alluring references to the show I just had to see what it was about. (I wasn’t quite as excited as I thought I would be. I liked BBC’s recent Robin Hood series more than Merlin.)
Viewing fandom history as a time line, I became aware of the fact that I am hardly ever interested in the current favourites. I always find fandoms a bit late, and seriously, I prefer it that way. It’s easier to deal with a closed canon than an open one. It’s exceptional that right now I am reasonably well up-to-date with several American shows: Supernatural, House, Heroes and Numb3rs. And I read fan fiction, and I read spoilers (especially just before the season begins! I usually start avoiding spoilers only before the big plot twists of the season), and I do speculate a lot. I am still not big on participating much on those.
All in all, the con was fun, and I definitely decided to go to the Finncon in Jyväskylä next year. If possible, I’ll be there the whole weekend. I don’t have enough fannish activities in my life. And it’s nice to have a reason to visit Jyväskylä again. There’s a couple of dear friends living there and other attractions: Antiquarian Book Shop Päijänne, University library, a lovely film shop Videodivari and
a proper cinema.
Animecon won’t be arranged together with Finncon next year, so the crowds shouldn’t be so overwhelming then. A bit smaller event sounds invitating for me.
Finally, one Finncon report rec. Cheryl Morgan cherylmmorgan (“a permanent guest” (as someone titled her this year) has written about earlier ones, too. Her commentary about the 2009 Finncon is thorough and interesting.