It's Åcan, not Åcannot

Two days before Åcon 8 happened, I fell and broke my ribs (which I don't recommend doing if you're going to a con). But, since I am a very dedicated fan, it wasn't going to stop me from going. It's Åcan, not Åcannot, after all.

The first stretch of the road to Åcon was taking the train to Uppsala.  I was quite immovable, but got a lot of help from strangers on the train. In Uppsala I meet up with Nahal Ghanbari, Anna Bark Persson and later next morning, Maria Nygård. Whenever we four are together, good things happen. We're currently plotting evil schemes planning Kontur while simultaniously running the Swedish tv-series blog Onda Cirkeln with Hanna Svensson and Frida Otterhag (but Frida is AWOL in Japan). We actually kinda signed on to do both of them while in Åland in 2015, so if you're ever in Åland and get an idea -- just go with it, it's probably the best idea in the world!

Thursday morning we took the ferry over to Åland. At the bus we met up with Johan and Linnéa Anglemark, Åka and Ante Davour, Jessica and Tony Elgenstierna, who're mostly all of them in on our Kontur-schemes. We spent the better part of the boat trip to Åland talking about committée-stuff. As one does.

When we got to Åland, the sun was shining, the birds were singing and the sea glistened in the sunlight. It was a good start, and it got even lovelier during the weekend.

The hotel had a nice porch where we sat outside in the sun and drank beer for most of the weekend.
Since Åcon's a semi-relaxacon this means it has a very light program track with a lot of time between items to just hang out, read, explore Åland and drink beer. This suits me very nicely, and worked well with broken ribs.

The first program item was the Guest of Honour speech, where Zen Cho talked about the cloud of ignorance and how accepting that you don't know everything can be a good thing. It was a really good speech and set a good tone for the whole con. Meeting Zen Cho was great, I was immediately star-struck when I saw her at Loncon in the panel with Mary Robinette Kowal about regency fantasy, and I'd read and loved Sorcerer to The Crown. She has a lot of spirit and a contagious laughter.

Tommy Persson and Sari Polvinen had a book-duel, next, which consisted of Sari taking the side of character-driven books and Tommy the side of books with a structure. None of these things are exclusive, yet they can of course lead to very different books. Tommy and Sari landed in the diplomatic consensus that "a good book is a good book", which is all the consensus you need, sometimes.

Early Friday morning I attended Crystal's Impostor Syndrome Workshop. I felt like an Impostor for saying I have Impostor Syndrome (which probably means I have it). It was such a great workshop, Kudos to Crystal for making time for this!

Friday early afternoon I participated in "Marvel's female superheroes" with Kisu Leikomaa, Elisa Wiik and Nahal. Some great things were said. I had a lot of fun and was pleased with the result. I had planned to be in one more program item during the weekend (Wibbley Wobbley Timey Wimey) but ended up in a couple of game shows too, which often happens when Jukka Halme is involved.

The first gameshow I participated was later that Friday, when my team fought against Zen Chos team in "Never Mind the Buzzaldrins" which was a game show where we had to guess the movie from the poster. This seemed easy enough. Except the posters where Polish and very, very artsy (read: had absolutely no connection to the movies). I, Rachel Monte and Tobias Bodlund were named team Amoeba, but quickly renamed ourselves Team Bad Ass. The other team consisted of Zen, Shimo and Merja Polvinen (I think). Their team-name escaped my memory, but not their inevitable victory.

The lovely Candy assisted the game-show host Jukka, and he was a real cutie. I sang to his honour by switching the word "Carrie" to "Candy" in Europes song. It sounded horrible. I'm going to have to make it into a filk.

Saturday meant that I was going to host my first ever panel: "Wibbley Wobbley Timey Wimey". I have always felt the urge Not To Moderate a panel. I really don't think I'm suited for being a moderator. It's just not my thing. But... A while back I wrote something on Facebook a long the lines of "Someone should host  time travel panel! I want to talk about time travel!" So, of course Sini Neuvonen contacted me and asked me to host one on Åland. (Be careful what you wish for!)

I thought that - if I'm ever going to host a panel about anything, it should be time-travel, so I accepted. I recruited Åka, Shimo and Tommy, and prepared a bunch of themes;

* Why do we need temporal mechanics?
* Destiny-schmestiny
* The Blast from the Past
* Are you my mommy?

I thought the panel went ok. I'd prepaired for it months ahead, sent out questions to the panelists and was not very stressed about it at all. Afterwards I had a lot of people come up to me and say they liked it. I hope there will be a next time!

Me and Hanna Svensson, posing with out Time Travel-t-shirts!

There were a "Romance and fantasy"-panel with Zen, Kisu, Tommy and Merja as a moderator. I'm full of admiration of Merja, she's indeed marvellous. Her Brittish accent is very good too!  Tommy quickly stated that he was the token male, and laughter ensued. It was a good panel! I really liked it!

It was followed by "History and writing" with Zen, Shimo, Vesa Sisättö, Petri Hiltunen and Sari Polvinen. It too was a great panel and they even got in a few good points about appropriation too.


The last item of Saturday was the game show "Just a Speculative Fiction Minute" and I was, again, recruited as a contestant. It was improv and that's not really my strong suit so I got out of my comfort zone real quick. It was set up so that I'd get a title and the audience would shout some directives, a theme, a genre and some elements and then I had to review or explain the story as if it was a real book. And in 60 seconds. The first time I got horror and it really, really went bad. I went about it all wrong, trying to tell the horror story instead of getting laughs. I got a few sympathetic laughs, and went with a different approach for the next few ones.

The last one was about a Russian cabaret, Swedish Sharkballs and Vulcanos, and I made up a story about Vulcans in a Russian Cabaret that was hated by the audience (that was Vulcans too), and how they showed their dislike by giving the actors the "Vulcan-Nooooo!" and then sinking them into shark tanks. Thankfully people laughed.

Mikael Teern and Johan Jönsson. Micke seems to be Johan's body guard here. He was making some kind of jedi wave, I think.

The Saturday party was a blast too. So many good friends together at one place is almost always a guaranteed fun night, but I can't stress how lovely it is to be among this exact crowd. Swedish and Finnish Fandom are the best.

Ben Roimola and his wife (sorry, your name escapes me) came up to me and said that I'd been very funny on the game shows, and I was very thankful to them for saying that, even though I felt it couldn't be true (my impostor syndrome acting up). Then Mikko Seppänen and Elisa had read my blog post about the crazy Legend of Tomorrow-theory, and we had a fun talk about that, one fellow tv-addict to another. Then we started talking about Star Trek, and Petri quoted one of the first movie, and I quoted another, and Mikko quoted another, and so on and so forth until one of the persons listening said that it felt like being on a carusel and then getting thrown off and seeing it spinning out of control.

Talking about the beauty of Star Trek is one of those small moments that adds up to the feeling of how much I belong in fandom. Having a program where people are allowed to discuss regency fantasy and romance fantasy in a serious way, is another. I've been called a fake geek girl for liking romance, but here no one judged me. I have gotten used to not even being given the time of the day when talking about Star Trek, but these people not only listen, they accept that I'm every bit as much of a Trekkie as them. They take me seriously. And I love them for it.

Also they're really funny!

My good friend and fellow punster Tero, whom obliged me when I just had to take a pic of him and tweet "The night is dark and full of Tero's". 

I totally loved the con, I loved the program, I loved the people and the atmosphere. It suited me very well. I loved the game shows, even though I felt a bit awkward at times. (And I would go up there again!)

This is just one of the many reasons I'm working on Worldcon 75. Finnish Fandom has been involved in the three greatest cons I've been too, Loncon, Archipelacon and Åcon. We need more people to meet the Finnish fandom and and experience the Finnish cons.

I'm gonna go to Finncon this weekend. I expect it to be an awesome con, too.

Fantastika 2016

I was thrilled when Carolina Gomez Lagerlöf announced that they were doing Fantastika at Dieselverkstaden again. I never attended Fantastika in 2013. I would have loved to, but due to circumstances, I couldn't.

This time, I was there working for three different conventions; LunCon 2016 that I'm hosting this fall, Kontur which I'm on the concom for next May, and the big Worldcon 75 which I'm on staff for. You're probably wondering if I'm mad, doing all of these constuff at the same time. The answer is yes.

I packed all my flyers, con-t-shirts and went.

Join us, and together we shall rule fandom as readers and fans!

I met up with my Finnish friends at the Central Station in Stockholm and went out for lunch at the lovely Rice-restaurant near Dramaten. I ate all the watermelons. And the sushi. And ice cream with salt licorice. So good! I met a new Finnish fan, Linn Gröndahl, and we bonded on the bus over our disabilities. She was a cool and awesome person!

Then we went to Dieselverkstaden.

My first thought was that it was a really nice and big venue, suited for all purposes. Throughout the weekend, though, I started noticing stuff I felt was a bit off, like the Dealer's room was a bit hidden, the accustics were horrible (concrete walls are not good for large gatherings!) and the Bistro was horribly noisy.

First item was Merlin, the man, the myth, the magic wih Rhuddem Gwelin. An excellent talk about the different versions of the myth and how it changed by christianity. Morgana became an evil sorceress, Guinevere became an adulteress and Nimue became evil. I really loved the talk, and it was fascinating to hear how the story changed with the different times. I loved that Rhuddem was so much in love with Colin Morgan (I am too!). This talk could easily have been in a bigger room, as it was filled to the brim.

Then, I met the lovely Therese Norén who'd emailed me the week before; "Hey, I have a gift for you. Remind me to give it to you at Fantastika." I'd been like: "GIFT? What gift? Am I getting a gift? I wonder what it is? Probably dillchips? Can't you tell me? Giiift! Tell me now? I wanna now! GIFT!"
And she was like: "It's a gift."

Very mysterious.

It turned out to be A WHOLE BOX OF SUPERNATURAL. I almost cried.

Then Eva Norman told me that they had made sure the Gopher Hole had dillcrisps. And incidently, Luke Smith also informed me that he had bought and eated dillcrisps. I congratulated Luke, and congratulated myself since the dillcrisp-fenomenon is becoming rather large in Sverifandom.

Maria Turtschaninoff's Guest of Honour interview with my friend Nahal Ghanbari was another good item. Maria is truly a gifted writer with such creativity and love for stories!

Later on, I had my first own item; The open mic from 21 until 22. Unfortunaly, we had almost noone in the audience. I went to the sofa groups outside and asked a few members to come and listen, which they obligedly did.

A.R. Yngve

A.R. Yngve talked about "Frank and the Robot", Tobias talked about Laird Barron, Tora Greve talked about Sture Lönnerstrand and Calle Werner talked about Peter Nilssons books. We finished early, and I tried, valiantly, to fill the time with bad puns -- I even made an unprepaired talk about conspiracies, but in the end we closed down early. (Not without us making some Luncon-advertisement of course, since me, Calle and Tobias are all a part of the Luncon committee.)

Most of the other members of the con were at the panel about the big Fannish Feud around Feminac. I would have loved to gone to, too! I was actually told by Lena Jonsson, one of the participants in the panel, that they had created the panel mostly because of my suggesion, so it was a shame I wasn't able to go. 

I was a bit disappointed, honestly. The thing about Swecon is that I love it. I want to see it all. I want to talk to everyone. Be everywhere.

I was uplifted by Jukka Halmes quiz. Jukka is the funniest guy I know, and I'm his biggest fan. He had the same kind of quiz in Åcon (which I shall have to write about soon), and me and Tobias Bodlund had been among the contestants then. This time we were in the audience, smirking about how we remembered all the answers. (Only I didn't remember much, really.)

Tobias Jarl: "Can it be... The Exorcist?" (How on earth did he see that in that pic?)

Tobias Jarl impressed me with his skill of associating pics with movies. This picture above was from the movie poster to the Exorcist. Noone but Tobias got that. Later, Ian Sales won the respect and awe of Finnish Fandom by scoring high on the fourfield-questions that were quite impossible. (Although I got the Jukka-thing!) Ian Sales is an excellent guy!

After the programs ended, people seemed to wander of somewhere and I went to bed early. At two o'clock in the morning Nahal and Anna stumbled in. I sad up, very confused, and tried to understand what was going on. Anna tried to explain repeatedly but I sounded like a deaf and confused grandmother. "T-shirt? What are you doing? Where are you going? What are you doing? What t-shirt? What are you saying?"

Then I put the hearing aids on.

The next morning, I became increasingly suspicious that the program-team had a grudge against me when my next program item "First time at an SF-convention?" had almost no audience either. This time I went to the Dealers room and got Swedish Zombie-Jonny and his friends to listen. Later Jonny came up and said to me and Eva that he really appreciated the presentation, which made me really glad. And at the dead dog party on Sunday I talked to Jörgen Jörälv who'd been to my item at Confuse. I was told he really appreciated it, and the bingo was great too, so that made me happy again. Have to do that bingo again!

I sat a while in the dealer's room on saturday, talking to people about Worldcon, Luncon and Kontur. And Älvsbyn. But the dealer' room had bad air and the accustics were really bad, so I had to leave early. I went to the hotel room, had a shower and that picked me up a bit. Though, as I was drying my hair I almost had a heart attack because Johan Jönsson walked in on me. (He'd gotten the key from Anna to get her USB-stick before a panel). Luckily I was wearing a towel.

The Appropriation and exotification panel was awesome. Nahal and Anna Ceras Erlandsson talked the most, and had interesting things to say from their unique perspectives. Nahal mentioned Castle in the air which featured a persian carpet salesman, and how she loved the book but later re-read only to discover how the culture is depicted as a horrible and dirty place, and how absurd it was that the carpet sales man decides to move to the western country which he felt what  nicer because it has greens, even though the western country was at war. Because of course it's more important to have clean and green cities than being safe from war...

Anna Bark Persson and Anna Gustafsson Chen where also in the panel, which should have been named Nahal and the Annas with the double surnames.

After that I felt a bit over-tired and went to talk to a lot of friends at the restaurant Bistro. We sang silly songs and talked about fandom. Tobias Jarl and a few others where being intellectual. Me and Hanna Hakkarainen just showed each other pics of cute cats and babies. Then my brain just stopped working, I started to lose words and couldn't concentrate, so I went outside for fresh air. I found a spot under the hut on the other side of the road, so I sat there and was joined by Adam Thorp for a while.

I started noticing more and more how my tired brain got worse as the weekend progressed, I had headaches, got tired quickly and couldn't focus, couldn't join the conversations. It probably was due to the fact that the venue had concrete walls and the sound was too noisy for my poor ears. I'm afraid I became quite boring at times.

Because of that tiredness I missed Nordic Fantasy AND Feminist SF in the 70s and today. Such a bummer! 

The big thing me and my Kontur-committée friends have been waiting for happened later that evening: The vote for next Swecon!  We had secured four Guests of Honour already, Ann Leckie, Kameron Hurley, Saladin Ahmed and Siri Pettersen, and we couldn't wait to tell people about them.

We won the bid, so next Swecon will be named Kontur, and will be in Uppsala the 26th til 28th of May. We're so excited about it! Make sure you come!

The first thing that went through my head after we won was "Yes, we get to do the Swecon!" The second thing that went through my head afer we won was "OMG, WE'RE DOING A SWECON!" *panic* 

And then there was the Alvar Prize. I was nominated for the second time, and competed against Håkan Wester, a very nice and pleasant fellow who's done a great job with Västeråsfandom.

I had not counted on me winning, but apparently everyone else had. I had thought that I might win, but my utmost concern was wether or not I would cry if I did.

I have a tendency to be emotional. It's really embarrassing. I won a phone once at a big convention for my school, and when I got up to receive it I started crying a bit. It was very embarrasing. (This is why I can't ever get married, I would just weep and be a mess.) So I'd tried to steel myself against being too emotional, and I succeeded. Perhaps a bit too well. I was like "OK, let's get this over and done with!" I wish I had prepared a speech and maybe some good pun. Such a wasted opportunity.

Anyways, thanks again to all of you whom voted for me. I am so happy to have so many dear friends in fandom, who seem to think that I'm doing something right! Love you all!

My third item was Generations of fans  with Caroline Mullan, Mats Linder and Luke Smith. It was a nice panel, but again, there were few in the audience. I can't really understand why the item was placed against another fandom item (International fandom). I would have loved to hear that too. Why, oh why! Anyways, stuff was said, nothing controversial (other than when a member of the audience blurted out that we talked too much and that it should be a dialogue, not a monologue. We had a dialogue, but not with the audience. That's not what panels are for, that's what discussion circles are for.)

Caroline mentioned how some fannish stuff like Mushroom in the morning (?)-jokes can be a bit off putting and how much that saddened her. Some in-jokes can be off putting, but rather than stopping with them all together, we must work to le people in on the joke. My immediate thought was that my dillcrisp-joke is becoming like that, and I would love for that to be a thing in Sverifandom.

Luke Smith and me!

Talking with Caroline and Luke, I got increasingly curious about the British fandom. Lately a lot of British fans have started to come to our cons. This is so nice! Later me and Nahal found out Nnedi Okorafor is coming to Eastercon in 2018, and so we must go!

One of the funniest things all weekend was the NoFF auction at Saturday night. The bright and brilliant friend of mine,  Hanna Svensson, made up hilariously funny stuff on the go, and the interaction between her, Bellis and Johan Anglemark was lovely. I laughed so hard I cried.

At Saturday's party, the best part was Johan Jönsson reading aloud the Swedish translation of Star Wars 4, with empathy.

The second best part was the discussion we had about how Sverifandom would look in 2050. "There will probably be panels discussing how dillcrisp affected Swedish fandom." It's important to make your mark on fandom, and mine is apparently the importance of using microphones, and dillcrisps.

Sunday I got up early to listen to Maria Turtchaninoff's Worldbuilding-talk which was great! I had spent the week reading Anaché and Maresi; fascinating storys with good characterizations, interesting and unique worlds and a fresh take on gender and feminism.

Me and the Onda Cirkeln-members had our tv-series panel which was awesome fun. (Let's do that again, shall we!) Then we went out for lunch with our friends Sara and Marie. Then I just mingled, sold memberships for Kontur, talked to people about Worldcon and fangirled over Gilman.

The convention ended on a high note. The choir Gléowine sang songs from LoT and GoT beautifully, and I sat next to the polish fan Marcin, a nice fella'! We enjoyed the closing ceremony tremendously. I had goosebumps.

The dead dog party was lovely as ever. I sat outside, mostly, where it was less noisy. Me, Jukka Särkijärvi and Tobias Bodlund plotted a take over of Denmark. Later in the evening the ideas for Kontur started sprouting, and we decided upon making a game show for Kontur (and I, at least, decided that Jukka Halme must be one of the contestants, schhhh, don't tell him!) and then Tobias got a phone call from his friend Anna whom asked: "Do you want to go swimming, we have a car?" He was somewhat reluctant. Ian Sales added: "Look on the bright side, at least she didn't say 'Do you want to go swimming, we have a cow.'" Tobias stated that he'd go swimming if the car was amphibious, and Ian Sales then added that HE would go swimming if the cow was amphibious. Hilarity ensued.

Later in the night we found our way to the hotel lobby where me and Ian Sales showed pictures of our cats (this is the greeting ritual of the crazy cat people). I talked a bit to Markus Olausson too, and Luke was a bit tired.

"Paint me like one of your french girls."

On that note, the tale of the Swecon 2016 must end. We had joy, we had fun, we had seasons in the sun. The program I thought was a bit disappointing (probably because I missed everything), the venue was a bit hard on the ears, but the con was well-arranged, the Green room was nice, and Swecon's always the most anticipated time of the year for me, because I get to meet all my friends.


But, there's another story to be told of Fantastika, a parallell story about a very confused hotel staff.

Me and Anna Bark Persson booked a hotel room together in January. Being roomies with Anna's always a good plan. I put her to sleep by munching on dillcrisps and she wakes me up early so I don't miss anything of importance. Maria Nygård later joined in May, I contacted the hotel again and booked an extra bed for three nights.

The day before the con Anna texted and said she would not be staying the last night because she had to work on monday. Maria would be leaving on Sunday too, so I was going to have the twin room by myself the last night. I remebered that Jukka Särkijärvi had been searching for a place to stay from Sunday til Monday, so now I had a bed to offer, and became the lady in shining tiara and saved the day.

I contacted the hotel and asked them to remove the spare bed since it was only the two of us staying the last day. They where confused since I hadn't payed for it (which they never told me to do) but it was easy to fix and I got the spare for two nights, and was going to pay at the desk in the morning. 

The day of the con, Maria fell ill with the flu. (Poor Maria, she really wanted to come.)

I felt sorry for the hotel staff too, when I once again contacted them about the spare bed, this time cancelling it all together. They were beginning to be rather confused by me ordering and cancelling spare beds at this point. 

Then on Sunday morning, Linn came and asked if she could leave the bag in my hotel room for the last night, since she was taking an early boat Monday morning. Sure, I said, but where are you going to sleep? I don't have to sleep, she said, I'm going up early. Yeah, I said, I think you should try to sleep for a few hours. *using my motherly voice* Linn said okay.

Thus we were three sharing the room the last night.

I went back and asked for an extra bed, again, and they said they would put it up there for one night. So now we had three people sharing a room for the last night after all.

But when we got up to sleep after the dead dog party, there was no extra bed.

I called down and they had to start looking for an extra bed at two in the morning. They finally found one and said "have it for free, since we messed up".

Admittedly, I can see how they might have been confused about the whole extra bed situation. And that's how you play Confuse-a-hotel.

These hearing aids aren't just for show A.k.a. This message speaks volumes.

In July 2014 I wrote this post in Swedish after attending Swecon 2014, the Steampunk festival, in Gävle, Sweden.

I was asked to be on the program, which made me simultaneously very happy and very nervous. I’d never been on a panel before and didn't know if I actually had something sensible to say. And, of course, there's my hearing disability to be nervous about.

I was worried that I would mishear the audience questions, or mishear what my fellow panel members would say, or that I would get too tired and have a hard time concentrating during the panels. This might seem silly, but as a HoH (hard of hearing) person, you get fairly use to hearing the wrong thing, answering the wrong thing, and seeming a bit confused. People don’t see the hearing aids, they don’t see what you can and can’t hear, and I think many just assume you’re a little bit slow.

It's not a question of me being slow, dumb or unintelligent. 

I was born with a sensorineural hearing disability, caused by a damage in my inner ear. I don’t have the needed amount of hearing cells, and the ones I have are not functioning as they should. It's inoperable. I can’t use a cochlear implant. The only thing that helps are hearing aids.

Different from a conductive hearing loss which affects all frequencies, my hearing loss means I have more difficulties hearing certain frequencies, and that sound gets distorted, even with a hearing aid. Which means that I have to process sound and figure out what it means. 

The normal speaking tone is around 60 decibels. I can pick up mosts frequencies as low as 45-55 decibels. Birds chirping and people whispering is almost silence to me. I am never going to be a sneaky ninja. I could never really participate in a whispering game. Heck, even sounds in the normal speaking range is going to fall of my registry. Some consonants are very hard. In Swedish, such words as juni or juli are a huge challenge for me.

Every time I listen to someone talk, or try to participate in a conversation, I have to focus, concentrate really hard, and translate the distorted sound into words that make sense to me. I have to figure out how to fill in the gaps. This makes me tired all the time, and being tired makes it even harder to listen. Imagine if someone took away every third word in this text. Reading this might then be a very tough nut to crack! Welcome to my everyday conversation.

My brain is constantly working overtime trying to interpret sounds through my damaged inner ear. And it takes a lot of brainpower. But despite my best efforts, and hearing aids in both sides, the sounds gets distorted, or they just fall away. I usually hear about 80-90 % of what's being said with hearing aids.

On a good day.

When it's peaceful and quiet around me.

When the person talking to me is right in front of me. Like, right next to me.

Needless to say, in noisy environments like cons and such, my hearing aids and my ability to concentrate will be put to the test. It's a real struggle, one I always lose in the end since I get too tired. And it sucks.

As a kid, having the disability-talk was hard, and I was afraid my friends would stop coming around if I was too demanding or troublesome. I get that it's tiring to have to think about how you stand when you speak to me, and to talk slowly and clearly. So I dealt with it in a joking matter, my way of solving the problem without even having to explain myself. I told my friends I was a spy and the hearing aids were my spy gear. When someone said something I didn't hear, I blamed my in-ear-spy-device.

"These hearing aids aren't just for show" has gotten to be my adult-joking-thing. I like to make jokes about my condition to help people remember it.

The problem is, it's not working any more. I really need my friends to understand how this disability affects me, like every day. And I really need those of you who arrange cons to learn what to do to make things easier for me and others with hearing disabilities. It's difficult for me to talk about it since I've spent my whole life trying to Not Be A Nuisance, but this is my reality and it doesn't go away.

First of all, it's a social handicap. It's a communication obstacle. I'm having trouble following conversations since I mishear words.

As disabled, you develop strategies to be able to make the most of social gatherings. If I do go out on the town, I usually take off my hearing aids (they don't help much anyway if I'm in a noisy environment). If I'm in a coffeeshop with friends, I sit in the middle of the room so everybody is equally close to me. I also try to ask questions, summarize and confirm that I’ve heard right, and that way I catch up if I miss a few words.

My hearing disability often results in me double checking instructions, to make sure I got them right. I ask and ask again, and sometimes I have to cut in while people are talking and ask them to repeat themselves. I constantly worry about being rude, disrupting my friends like that, but if I don’t catch the phrase while it’s said, the rest of the sentence may be gibberish too. I’m constantly feeling like a socially awkward penguin because of this.

It’s also demanding for my friends, whom have to accommodate my special needs. They have to be sure to include me in conversations and make sure that I hear them. I am constantly missing the punch line in jokes, and sometimes when asked if they can repeat the word, I am told that it’s not important or “I’ll repeat it later”, which inadvertently makes me feel outside and less important. I know it’s not easy for them, and it’s sure not easy for me.

Secondly, it’s exhausting to have to concentrate so hard all the time.

I avoid noisy environments like discos, concerts, pubs, games. Sometimes I choose to attend these things, like cons, but I always know that there will come a time when I pay for the effort with physical and mental exhaustion. (All my spoons and then some.)

What can you do to help?

In social situations: 

Face me when talking.
Repeat or double check that I’ve got the important information.
Help me sit in the center so I can hear everyone.
Speak clearly, and if I ask you to repeat yourself, try to raise your voice just a tad, but mostly speak slower and more clearly.
If you have a induction loop in a facility, use it.
Microphones should always be used, and if an audience microphone is available, use it too.
Alternatively, have the moderator repeat the questions.

When I’m at conventions, I always sit in the front row. If I’m in a panel I prefer to sit in the middle. This is what works for me -- if you don’t know what works for someone else, try asking!

And how did it go at the Steampunkfestival?

Some panels went just fine, if I was placed in the center and didn’t get an audience question. Some panels worked less fine if the moderator forgot to repeat the audience question before someone answered it.

In one panel, I got an audience question and waited for the moderator to repeat it. My silence was interpreted as confusion or not having a good answer, so other panel members answered instead, while I looked like a question mark. I felt really stupid.

I had a slight problem understanding the guests of honour too. One spoke really fast, and one stuttered. It can’t be helped, I get that. People talk the way they talk. I chose to attend other program items.

One panel I listened to did NOT work at all, though. The moderator asked the audience (without using the microphone) if he could skip using the microphone. I misheard him and thought he meant “Do I really have to use the mic?” so I said yes.

When he then put the mic down and started to talk I thought he just chose to ignore me and I got really upset. I stayed and tried to listen, but got so bleedingly tired that I started crying. When the panel was over, I stepped up and said a few harsh words and then I stormed out. Not my finest moment. But I think this illustrates the importance of microphones.

Which only goes to show what NOT to do during conventions (or in general):

Avoid asking if you can be excused from using microphones. It only makes HoH (hard of hearing) people feel like a nuisance. We don’t want to make a big thing out of it. We want to have every possible help we can get without having to beg for it. And some people, like me, have a hard time asking for help.

Think about how you stand in position to the hard of hearing-person. Think about how the sound travels. Make sure you stand fairly close and facing the person.

When someone asks you to repeat what you said, don’t repeat it in the exact same tone. Take it a bit more clearly and slowly, and maybe a bit louder but no yelling. Yelling is rude.

I usually miss the first words of the sentence if the talker is turning to me or stuttering at the start, and if I lose the start I often don’t understand the context. So repeating the key words is helpful.

These tips are helpful when making accommodations for people with my kind of hearing disability. But please do remember, not all hearing problems work the same.

If you’re unsure of how to help, ask, do not assume. Don’t be scared of asking me about my hearing disability, I’m glad to see people taking an interest in how to help me. I know not everyone feels this way, though, and I’m not always up for the discussion. I suggest you proceed with caution and respect when you have questions.

I hope these tips can help people understand the ways sensorineural hearing loss works, and that social exclusion and mental and physical exhaustion is a big part of it. I hope future convention committees can take this under consideration.

ConFuse 2015

This month I've attended the annual national Swedish science fiction convention (Swecon) ConFuse. It took place in Frimis (the free mason-hotel) in Linköping and was arranged by Linköpingsfandom (or as I like to call them; The Illuminati). Frimis was a beautiful venue with slightly gothic architecture in the bar and dealers room. It had pilars, chrystal chandeliers and huge old oil paintings, mixed with 70's interior design. Perfect hideout for Illuminati, I'd say.

ConFuse had three excellent Guests of Honour (GoHs), Kristina Hård, Madeline Ashby and Ben Aaronovitch, three very lovely authors. Kristina has written Himalayabreven, Alba and Kleptomania and is coming out with the second book in the Kleptomania-series (Snösommar) the 6th of november,  which I am eagerly looking forward to. "Remember, remember, the 6th of november..."

I haven't read Madelines books but I intend to. She's written (among other things) iD and vN, two sf-novels about artificial intelligence. I love AI-themes, and she seems like a brilliant person.

Ben Aaronovitch has been writing for a while about Peter Grant, a police officer in London who deals with supernatural crimes. I've read the first book, Rivers of London, and loved it. It's funny, mysterious and totally brittish, which pleases an anglofilian like me.

 I'd somehow agreed to be in four programme items; "Fandom and social medias", "Meet and Greet - Conventions and fandom for newcomers", "Conventions then and now" and the following group discussion. To start from the beginning I think I should say that the con really started at home, with me spending the better part of the vacation at my parents house preparing for these panels/discussions. I even made bingo cards for all the newcomers so they could have some fun with the new expressions and stuff.

The week before ConFuse I managed to sign up for two more programme items; as a helper in Bellis NoFF-auction and as a judge in Jukka Halmes Game Show that was a rip off totally original show called Pointless. My friend Tobias said I was trying to take over Swecon. You don't know how true that is... Mouahahaha. In the future, it will be called Fiacon and there will be massage chairs and dillchips everywhere.

The trainride to Linköping offered a lot of familiar faces. Not only did I meet my friends Therese Norén and Marie Engfors on the station, when I got on the train I managed to get the seat just behind Hanna Svensson, my friend and co-blogger for our tv-series blog Onda Cirkeln. What are the odds for that?

I blame Illuminati.

I also met Hannas friend Mia, who was about to attend her first con. I had my first opportunity to introduce the concept of fandom to a newcomer so I immediately handed out a bingo card to her, and offered them some dillchips. As one does.

Getting to the con was easy, and there I met almost everyone I know in Swedish and Finnish fandom, and also said hello to two old friends from Luleå university (Hi Björn! Hi Nils-Erik!) who simultainously, but not together, had decided to come to Swecon, because they had heard about it from me.

I got to introduce my dear friends from Malmöfandom to my fellow Swedish fans. I was so proud to be in Swecon with not only Simon and Calle, but also Tobias, Frida, Camilla, Ingrid, Karolin and Helen. Malmöfandom is growing and becoming a big group not only at pub meetings but at cons, too! (I should count Johan Jönsson to Malmöfandom too, but I think his heart is still with Upsalafandom. Nah, I'm counting him too. Upsala can't have him. Sorry guys.)

Frida Rosengren, Helen Ekeroth, Tobias Jarl, me, Camilla Svedén and Ingrid Thulin.

The con started with an short opening ceremony where Jonas Wissting, the Illuminati leader, introduced the Guests of Honour, and explained that he had forgot The Spirit of Swecon at home™. This is a thing that happens a lot at Swedish cons. (The forgetting-the-spirit-thing.) It's nice to have traditions, and we are proud of ours. AT LEAST WE HAVE SPIRIT, OKAAY! ;)

The first item of the programme was Madeline Ashby's GoH-speach, which I attended. It was about her work as a consulting futurist and author. Very intriguing. She tells her stories from a marginalized PoV, illuminating issues of the poor, the outcasts, different groups of people, which I think is a good approach and something that's important in litterature. We already know the PoV of the white heterosexual male, we need other voices too.

After that I prepared for my panel at 8 pm. It was a great panel to start with. It was just me and my friends, chatting about social media and fandom, which I hope was enjoyable for others too. Although I had some points of mine that I never got to make, and Johan held a seven minute monologue in the beginning that was interesting but perhaps a bit too long. ;) Me and Anna argued that fandom is a community that thrives on social media, where we connect and create and spread the word about what we do. Johan held the PoV that social media is great, but the text culture that we are a part of need more space to flourish. We need the fanzines.

Me and a couple of friends continued the discussion in the bar, and Alexander Hallberg said the brilliant thing: "Fanzines are mostly you holding a monologue about what you like, but in social media you can hold a conversation about it with someone else."

Fanzines are great (and sure, you can send in your own texts and that could be construed as conversation) but I think fandom not only will survive the online phenomenon that is twitter and facebook, but that social media works really well for us.

After the Social Media-panel I listened to Marianna Leikomaa interviewing Ben Aaronovitch. (Marianna, you have such a great english accent!) Ben talked about his time on Doctor Who, and about Peter Grant and the studios asking for a white actor to play Peter in a movie, saying that Ben should see it as a "raceless" movie. Yeah. No.

Ben seems to be a funny and relaxed guy, even if he doesn't like cats. (I had a moment to talk to him in the Green room and ended up having a long conversation about cats and dogs.) I've read Rivers of London and found it really good, now I want to read the other books too.

Thus ended the first day of programming. At night in the bar, I had a blast. Dave Lally had been kind enough to bring me a doctor who-scarf (you know, those really long ones) so I wore it and it was beautiful. I also invented the concept tandem-scarf since the scarf was big enough to fit two necks easily.

Saturday was the big day for me. Me and Karolin had a lovely breakfast at our hotel where two elderly citizens asked us if we were on a school trip. (Naw!) Then we headed to the Green Room where Karolin helped me to cut out bingo cards. At 11, me and Eva Norman held an introduction to fandom and conventions, which went great. I even had two newcomers tweeting me about it. I'm so happy, it was fun! I want to do it again.

Björn Hedblom posted this on instagram too. As you can see, it's all about t-shirts.

After a sushi lunch with Malmöfandom, Norrlandsfandom and Hanna, we listened to "Telling Stories in Different Media". They talked a lot about writing for games, which was interesting even though I don't play that much.

From left to right: Thomas Årnfelt, Alexander Hallberg, Jessica Elgenstierna, Ben Aaronovitch and Tobias Bodlund

Ben explained that he finds it easy to write for comis since he doesn't have to describe word by word what happens in the story, the artist can co-create the story. For example, he could write "And then an accident happened" and the artist would create some sort of accident.

I also went to see "AI and Robotics: A look into the future" where Patrick Doherty held a talk about what artificial intelligence is and what we can do in robotics today. I found it fascinating and a bit scary. But at the end I was mostly irritated because he talked about 5 minutes too long, and seemed to argue that we should not be afraid of giving A.I. weaponry, and that the laws of robotics could be in the way if we were to defeat terrorism.

In the evening I was a part of the "Conventions today and tomorrow" panel with Saija Kyllönen, Johan Anglemark, Eva Holmström and Anna Davour, moderated by Karl-Johan Norén. Before the panel we had somewhat different ideas about what kind of stuff that we should or should not discuss but it in the end I think it went spendidly, even though I was told that I relied too much on my papers and looked at them too much. It a big thing for me to be able to talk without loosing my trail of thought, and I overcame my nervousness and talked a lot. I think I did the best I could.

I have voiced my opinions so many times on the mailing list about what we can do to introduce newcomers to fandom, and felt that I had many things to say. I hope people don't think I talked too much though. I talked about the importance of letting new fans set their mark on fandom too, and the importance of telling people what it is that we do, that set us apart from other fandoms.

Afterwards I held a group discussion about cons, and was joined by Joakim Mäki, a fairly new fan that's a part of Umeåfandom, David Lally, Herman Ellingsen and Lars-Olov Strandberg. Lars-Olov is one of the oldest fans in Sweden. In fact, he had been to the first Swedish con in Lund in 1956, and even was the Guest of Honour in the 2005 Worldcon (!!!). He made some interesting reflections about how it was in fandom then and how it is now. "Now a days, there a lot more women. It makes it more interesting."  Bless you, Lars-Olov. And Go Women! When I told him that I'm doing a mini-con in Malmö this october, he just lit up and got really excited about it. There hasn't been anything in Malmö since the 60's, so he was very glad and decided to come and hang with us. This is the beauty of fandom. It doesn't matter if you are 90 or 19, we're all just as enthusiastic.

After participating in three items, I had developed a bit of an headache and a sore throath to I went to the bar to have some tea. I hung out with Joakim Mäki, Hanna and Mia, and Mias boyfriend Daniel. Joakim is a really nice fellow, and he comes from Kiruna in norrbotten, my home county. I'm glad to see that fandom is spreading up north to my hood. There were more fans from Umeåfandom attending and they all seem to be really nice and fun to hang out with. The puns were flying all over the place. (And you know how I like puuunnss!) I have promised to come to a pub meeting next time I'm in Umeå. My brother lives there so I'm there sometimes.

Jukka's height is only exceeded by the height of his character. 

In the evening, I joined Quiz with Jukka Halme, and we did a Pointless-show. Jukka was the host and I was his Osman (the judge). It was really fun! I'm a big fan of Pointless, and also of Jukka Halme. He is a great entertainer and his quizzes and game shows should never be missed. If you don't know what Pointless is, I recommend you watch it on youtube. It's more fun than Jeopardy or The Weakest Link. The host Armstrong and his sidekick Osman has this dry, witty sense of humour that's so typically brittish. I'm already working on new ideas for next time!

The last item of the day, and my sixth and final appearance in the programme was the NoFF-auction with Bellis. It was a very fun show too, but it was a bit hard to come up with ways to sell the Science Fiction Magazines. I managed to bid too, and bought Anna Davours fanzine "Nålpistol" from 2005, among other things. 

Afterwards I hang out in the bar for the rest of the evening, talking to the Wester brothers, Tobias, Camilla, Frida and Mr Lally himself. Håkan Wester asked me for tips on how to build your own fandom group from the scratch, as we have done in Malmö, and I was happy to talk about it. He then went on to form Västerås-fandom. Yay! \o/

The final day of Swecon started with the Ancillary Panel, with Tommy Persson, Olov Livendahl, Saija Kyllönen and Thomas Cronholm. It was about Ancillary Justice by Ann Leckie, the novel that won the Hugo last year, and rightly so.

It is a great book, and the panel seemed to agree about that too. At first glance, the gender issue was the focus, but Tommy explained that on the second reading of it, he found that it actually was about colonization.

Tommy seems to have realized that he should have read the book before the panel. He makes up for it by quickly browsing through it before the panel.

It makes us think about what gender is. Some naturally assume that, for example, the people in the military are men. By changing everyone's pronoun to a female pronoun, it challenges assumptions about what defines men and women. I asked the panel to compare it to Left Hand of Darkness, where Ursula LeGuin consequently used "He" as the gender pronoun. Olov said that he thinks if we want to raise the issue of equality, it's better to use the gender pronoun that isn't the norm. I completely agree. Saija said that she would've liked it better if Leckie used "they" instead of he or she, and I think that could work too. My guess is that this will be the next thing tried.

Afterwards I attented the Troll panel with Kristina Hård, Oskar Källner, Carolina Gomez Lagerlöf (Moderator), Anna Vintersvärd and Rasmus Kaj. It's always nice to listen to authors talk about folk lore and mythology, and is talk of this becoming the nordic fantasy genre, nordic weird.

At noon, the Swecon bid happened. There were two competing Swecon bids. Bellis wanted to do a Motorcon, which would be a month long, with 34 Guests of Honour, and a big dead dog-concert with Motörhead. The membership would cost about 100 000 SEK (but not to worry, it could be paid in small installments). The other bid was Fantastica, at Dieselverkstan in Stockholm. It won, despite the allure of Motorcon. :D

Then the winner of the Alvar Prize was announced. Maria Nygård won, which was awesome. She's done so much for Swedish fandom and without her, I'm not sure I would've found my way to fandom in the first place. After being nominated three years in a row, and even having a bunch of friends making a campain video for her, it was time for her to win.

Then Lars-Olov Strandberg got to receive an lifetime achievement award, and we sang a song about him, written by Karl-Johan Norén. It was a really wonderful celebration of this grand master of Swedish fandom.

 After that, I spent some time in the Alvarfonden Second hand book shop, where it was cosy and I felt like Giles from Buffy. "I need to consult my books." Selling books for Alvarfonden is a great way to meet new people, and just hang out and relax.





The last two items of this years Swecon was Animating locations and Therese Norén's Metafiction in Supernatural.

Johan Jönsson moderated the panel, and Jenny Milewski, Kristina Hård and Ben Aaronovitch talked about the places they write about. Jenny Milewski had a lot of fun stuff to say about writing horror stories in student halls and IKEA. She said that you should think about what potential the places has, and showed a fun book about a company that looks exactly like IKEA were they have explored the potential of being trapped, when you exit a room, you enter the same room again, with escalators moving the wrong way and stuff like that.

Even though I haven't seen much of Supernatural, I was drawn to the Metafiction in Supernatural-talk because I know Therese and she's a very enthusiastic and engaging person to listen to. It was really interesting. More of this, please! Metafiction is such a fun thing to play around with. 

Another person who uses metafiction is Jasper Fforde, who has written books about Thursday Next were the characters from Austens books come to life. Coincidentally, Jasper Fforde is the Guest of Honour at next years Finncon, and guess who's going there? Meeeeeeeeeeeee.

The closing ceremony was framed by Karl-Johan Noréns beautiful filk about Linköping saving fandom. It was a lovely way to end Swecon. I could try to summarize the weekend in a few words, but I wouldn't do it better than Madeline Ashby so I leave it to her:

Dead Dog was a blast too! I spent time with new and old friends. I talked to Markus Sköld, one of the authors in the Swedish anthology Waiting for the machines to fall asleep, I talked to the lovely Sini Neuvonen and GoH Kristina Hård, I managed to do some NoFF-Smoffing with the Finnish NoFF-candidate Mikko Seppänen and Korppi Susi. (Yes, NoFF-smoffing is a word, and now I just have to make sure I become the NoFF-candidate next year.)

As you can see below, me and Olov has started a new tradition - to take dead dog pics together from every Swecon we both attend. I hope we'll be doing it for many years.

Olov and me at ConFuse 2015

Me and Olov at Kontrast 2012

At the end of the evening, when the pub closed, the song Closing Time got stuck in my head. Me and a small company moved on to another pub were we talked about tv-shows, family traits and a bunch of other things I don't remember. I showed everyone my favourite opening of all time, from Warehouse 13. But it was from the wrong season, sadly, so I had to show them another one of the openings. (Thanks to everyone for being patient with me, and not strangling me.) And then I tried to explain the Warehouses, and failed. But Johan Anglemark succeeded in explaining it in a way that everyone could understand:

And finally, I had to fall back to my hotel room, since I was dead tired. But I managed a final tweet before I fell asleep.

I am ever so gracious.

Thank you to the Illuminati Linköpingfandom for arranging this lovely event. Thanks to the Guests of Honour for being amazing, thanks to everyone who attended and helped making this a wonderful weekend.  Until next time!

My first Worldcon

This years Worldcon, the 72^th, was set in London, UK. It was a five day con, from august 14^th to augusti 18^th with over 10 000 memberships sold, rougly less actually attending but still making this the biggest worldcon to this day. The Swedish fans were about 100 people or somewhat more, I think. 

The convention took place in ExCel, a really big conference center that served as the perfect location with its fresh fascilities, handicap access, auditorium and capital lounges. It never seemed too crowded to me, or that the air was to stale or that it was too hot. The fact that it was a bit outside of central London wasn't a problem as it was easy to get there by train. And noone was really there to do sightseeing anyway, right? ;)

The guests of honour were Iain M Banks (in Memoriam), John Clute, Malcolm Edwards, Chris Foss, Jeanne Gomoll, Robin Hobb, Bryan Talbot. Also attending were authors like Scott Lynch and Elizabeth Bear, Connie Willis, George RR Martin, Audrey Niffenegger, Jo Walton, Ken MacCleod. I was really excited about Connie Willis, and if you read swedish you can probably read my reviews of Blackout and All Clear and understand why she's one of the absolut best, according to me.

To my disapointment I never saw any of her panels, mostly because they were so popular that in order for you to see them, you had to queue for half an hour or more. 

The Highlights

Many of the panels touched on the subject of the fact that science and technology is progressing in a speed that makes science fiction seem dated much sooner than before. In other words, we already live in a science fiction world. This is a big challenge for science fiction authors, trying to think ahead and imagine the future or scientific progress that isn't there yet. Charles Stross is one of the science fiction authors who struggle with this, and at one of the panels he desperately cried out something along the lines of "I'm writing as fast as I can, but still by the time I'm finished with a book, there's some smart guy who developed the techique I wrote about."

Charlie Stross

"LOL-cats in space" with Charles Stross, Andrea Phillips, Adam Roberts and Jean Johnson (moderator) was one fun panel about social media, humour and SF narratives, and how the zombie invasion is already here with everybody looking down at smartphones, not really interaction with others unless online. Adam Roberts thought that the online communitys has done wonders for shy people, and can be seen as a feature instead of a bad thing. They talked about they way we use social media in stories, how you tackle the mob on the internet (or not). 

The challenges of science fiction today is somewhat similar to those of contemporary fantasy, or urban fantasy as we call it. At the panel "The Fantastic Now" the authors Kelley Armstrong and C E Murphy talked about how they handle dealing with supernatural creatures in a world where everyone is online, everything can be seen on youtube, everyone needs ID:s, passports and identification to travel and credit cards to buy things. How do you handle the werewolf transformation in this online reality and still keep them a mystery? How do you handle the fact that vampires live on forever, never aging, without raising eyebrows when you go to renew your drivers licence? CE Murphys explained that her googling about "How do you defeat face recognition at airport" might have gotten her name on a list somewhere. ;) "The fun thing about contemporary fantasy is to ask yourself how your supernatural characters get away with stuff", says Kelley Armstrong. I think that mirrors my idea of why I read it. How do the supes adapt in our modern world? 

Another memorable panel was "The Retrofuturism of JJ Abrams" with Pawel Frelik, Erin M Underwood, Ashley Pollard, Sorcha Ni Fhlainn and moderator Val Nolan. The panel had some problem agreeing on what retrofuturism is, and also a bit of a strange moment where Ashley demanded proof of statistics that wasn't ment to be precise but an example, but otherwise it was good. We all got into some of JJ Abrams series and talked about Fringe, Almost Human and other shows. And of course Star Trek. The panel seemed to agree on JJ being great at creating mysteries, but not very retrofuturistic. For example, Fringe can be seen as a remake of X-files, which actually was a remake of Twilight Zone. The remaking in it self doesn't make it retrofuturistic, using tropes from yesterdays visions of tomorrow does.

A little later on, I went to "Into every generation, a Captain Kirk is born", a panel about remakes that actually made a lot of intresting points about how next generation might consider JJ Abrams Star Trek a more truer version of Star Trek, in the same way we today view the next generation of Dr Who as "The Dr Who". Almost noone has seen the original series. Some question arised as to how icon the original Star Trek show is, and if that makes the remakes and reboots be the secondary versions.

One of the young adult panels was "Killing your parents" were I had a great laugh when YA-writer Sarah McDougal was talking about Harry Potter. She was abhorred about the fact that all the adults were so irresponsible. "He's eleven years old and you're leaving him to deal with really dangerous situations?! The only way to maintain the idea that parents can be good is to kill them." The orphan trope is well used in YA-literature today, and not without reason it seems. 

Another great panelist was the historian Gillian Polack, whom I listened to in many panels, the most memorable being "How To Read Safely in a Science Fictional Universe: Coping With Time Travel Narratives" (one of the best one, actually). She said that historians can only tell you what they think happen, for them to know they would'd have to had been there. As an historian she would love go back and study the past, but it would probably be somewhat tedious as there didn't happen as much as you would think. That's why someone on the panel suggested ”that's why we have to send the graduates!” There were some really interesting moments were they discussed paradoxes and the alternative realitys that follow, and how you solve the paradox problem. (Time Travel-narratives are the bestest.)

Kari Sperring

On several other panels, I listened to another historian and writer named Kari Sperring. She really got my attention with her knowledge and enthusiasm about women in history. On one hand she's writing historical fiction and on the other hand historical fantasy. I have to get a hold of some of her books! In the panel ""Your 'realistic' fantasy is a washed out colourless emptiness compared to the Rabelaisian reality.” Discuss". she went on to debunk some of the myths about women in 12th century, like how celtic women are portraited as adorned, independent, strong women in all of fiction (thank you for this misconception, Marion Zimmer Bradley) when the fact is that celtic women were no more their own being than the cattle that the men owned. And at the same time, in Egypt, women could get a divorce from her husband and move up the social ladder.

Also, Kari recommended Katharine Kerr books, and since I love Kerr, I was immediately inclined to like her as well. 

One of the best panels was ”The deeper the roots, the stronger the tree” which discussed the roots of modern science fiction and fantasy, and the ongoing appeal of authors such as Jane Austen, Arthur Conan Doyle, and what it is about them that lends itself to genrefication (love that word).

Mary Robinette Kowal was on that panel alongside Kari Sperring, and she was another ”Wow, I have to read her books!”-person. I think Maria Nygård's description of her as a one-liner machine was spot on, she really said some funny things. "They are wearing their underwear (corsets) on their clothes, they're like superman!" and "It's no accident the age of enlightenment came when the tea culture came to Europe. People went from drunk to highly caffeinated."

But on top of that, she also really knows her stuff, especially about Jane Austen (and you cannot do anything but love a Janeite) she quickly and very politely corrected Zen Cho who argued that she would have loved for Jane Austen to have taken a stand against such things as slavery in her time. Mary quickly explained about how Austen through subtle remarks make – for that time – good critic of the slave market as such and the ones dealing with it. It may be said that reading her literature as a 21th century person, the subtle remarks can sometimes be too subtle and not be understood in our time and age (she took the example in Mansfield Park with the way she portraited Mr Sir Thomas Bertram.)

The panel "Imagining resistance" was a good one. Moderated by Jeff VanderMeer, with authors like Robert Jackson Bennett, Pat Cadigan, Daryl Gregory and the psychiatrist Sarita Robinson. It brought up the really hard issues and what writers don't want to write about, childabuse and rape being the first mentioned. The panel came to the conclusion that there are certain places we just don't go to, issues has a tendency to censor themselves. We can go on and on about a fighting scene, we can describe in great details how people are being tortured, but we cannot describe sexscenes with any great detail. And why is that? Noone knows. But RJB wants to write a book where he deals with violence as we deal with it in reality, where people become these damaged persons, never getting the revenge of the perpetraitor. Violence is often glorified and used as a means of character growth. RJB also adresses the issue of authors who are making a point about something. He brought up the example of an essay by Neil Gaiman that describes the first time Gaiman realised that CS Lewis is making a point about christianity. Pat fills in that there is a great difference between advancing the plot and advancing the authors point, and some authors fail greatly at learning this difference.

Patrick Rothfuss and gang

Last but not least, I really really liked "These are not the elves your looking for", the trope-panel, mostly because of Patrick Rothfuss and his description of how he likes to take a trope, break it apart and put it together in a different way. He talked a lot about anticipation and overthrowing peoples anticipation, using his kid as an example. The first trope he introduced the kid to was "one, two, three" *raises the kid up on three* and he showed us the imaginary kid bouncing in his lap. He explained about how at first, there where no anticipation, the second time the kid started to get the idea that on "three" he was going to have fun. Then Pat changed the trope and raised him up on "four". Not so fun, thought Pat Jr, 'cause then he wasn't prepared for that to happen. It wasn't what he wanted. (Really, this was the most hilarious thing to watch). Patrick talked about Buffy as being a good example of how you can gradually show people how tropes work and how you can take them apart. The way Whedon builts up the show is that he slowly introduces the strong female characters, not making a point about it, and before you know it you are loving this show that has all these exceptional women like Buffy, Willow and Arya, and where the main guy Xander is the "token" man. Wonderfully done. Now I have to read Wise Man's Fear.

All in all, the panels had great diversity, and almost all the panels I saw mostly consisted of women (so, yeah! good job guys!), the moderators were good, the audience asked good questions, the seats for access at the front was available (since I'm hard of hearing, I always sit in the front).

I also went to The Hugo Ceremoni and the PEN-lecture by Audrey Niffenegger. Audrey was a great speaker and as the first to do the PEN-lecture in the spirit of H.G. Wells, she talked about what his work had meant to her. The speach can be found somewhere on the internetz, I hope. Oh, and she's working on a sequel to The Time Travelers Wife! YAY!

As you can see, we got *great* seats.

The Hugo Ceremoni was a great show to watch (and as you can see, we got great seats... ehum) with funny moments like when Cory Doctorow accepted the award for best graphic story on behalf of Randall Munroe (XKCD)... in superhero costume. It was built up to be kind of like the Oscars, and the celebrity crowd consisted of people like George RR Martin, David Benioff and D.B. Weiss, David Tennant (!!!), and so on and so forth. It was really glamourous and fun.

Ann Leckie won the hugo for best novel (Ancillary Justice), to noones surprise, and John Scalzi tweeted that the only sad thing about it winning is that his blurb was going to be crowded off the cover by ALL THE AWARDS IT WON. (LOL)

If you want to rewatch it, here's a link.






The Parties a.k.a. ”It seems like the whole party came early to help set up for the party.”

The evenings mostly circled around the Fan Village, or more precise: The Helsinki Telt. Which for one night served as the Scandinavian tent, and for another night as the Archipelacon tent. As you can see, here is a nice finnish fan with the infamously dangerous swan Archie.

I spent my time making new friends (mostly Finns), and I even ended up sort of being adopted by one nice lady (Whom thought she was old enough to be my mother. She really wasn't.) Me and another finnish woman named Nina discussed weird food. Or she thought dillcrisp sounded weird, and I thought she didn't have a say in the weird-food department since the Finns drink tar soda. (?!). 

The punster; David Weingart

I got tips on how to write from the swedish author Kristina Hård, had an quote-war on twitter with David Weingart (who as it turned out, is also working in the committee for next years worldcon Sasquan, and also is a very good filk-musician, you can find his stuff on youtube here). 

One night I helped out at the Scandinavian party where I served the really awful swedish ”delicacy” schnaps, making sure everybody knew that ”THIS STUFF IS REALLY AWFUL, but you have to try it all the same!” And people did. And strangely enough, people seemed to like it. Most people seem to have less developed taste buds than me ;) Or maybe they just like strong liquor.

I had a lot of fun talking to an norwegian fan named Tore. We connected talking about social wellfare. He was this smiley pensioner who could pop up from around the corner and say something interesting like explaining about virtue ethics and how this ethic isn't as widely thought about in ethics today as it was in the antiques :) 

The thing about fans is that there are no age differences. Well, physically the ages wary from about 18 to 98, but we all connect on the same level or somewhat same level and understand each other. We all speak the "language of nerds".

Jukka and Mikko, two really agreeable finnish fans, preparing for Dead Dog!

An honourable mention goes to Bellis, one of the swedish (although he is also greek) fans that I've gotten closest to during the years. He came storming in late thursday night after a long flight from Athens. He had been held up at the airport in Copenhagen due to three drops of rain, he proclaimed angrily, and took a cab ride to the hotel just to hurry to meet me. (We were going to have beers at ten pm). It had been so long since we had met, so the first thing we did was share lots and lots of hugs. Great Scott, I'd missed him! He then gave me a present, Virginia Wolf's "Orlando" which he signed for me. Thank you Bellis! 

We met sporadically during the week, mostly in the vicinity of the bar, but one night we went a little crazy and went to the eighties disco (!!!). I watched Bellis dance, do the moon walk, be cheered on by the other dancers. It was beautiful! I actually have the video on my phone. And no, you can't see it. (Unless you pay me a big sum of money, naturally).Later on I managed to shake my booty a little too, in my stiff sort of way. 

"There was a shocking lack of London Pride"

One thing I learned from this trip is that the britts overcook everything. Especially the chicken. It was always dry. Always. No exception. And the hamburger at the bar will be remembered throughout history as the worst hamburger ever. I tried to warn people, some listened, some did not and an awful experience ensued. Horrible horrible hamburger-trauma. Food wasn't that bad in other restaurants like the pizza place and Subway. I didn't really go looking very far for a good restaurant though. Just kept it short - I had better things to do than sit and eat! I ate a lot of Marie-crackers and Estella dillcrisps from Sweden in my hotelroom (had three bags with me, it's my favourite snack). The instant coffee I brought along from Sweden was also a lifesaver, as I didn't manage to find a coffee place serving a decent cup of coffee during the whole week.

The bar in the Fan Village had a shocking lack of London Pride, but as I soon noticed, free London Pride were given out in different places in the Fan Village. This makes for a very drunk Fia, or as I call it - even harder of hearing. (Ask me about this at your peril!)

"Fangirling"

Of all the embarrasing moments, one that I recall with great clarity is when I got to meet Connie Willis during her signing. I was so starstruck I really didn't know what to say, so I started to babble on about how much I really love her books. As I was talking I noticed how my voice did this highpitched sound at the end of every sentence. I blushed like a school girl and excused myself as soon as she was done signing. To her credit, she was politeness herself and genuinly pleasant to talk to, recommending me to visit S:t Pauls Cathedral in London if I ever go sightseeing. 

One evening in the finnish tent, I started talking to a fellow swedish friend and fan Johan Anglemark and a scottish guy (I can't remember the name, sorry). When I heard that he was scottish I immediately had to explain that I love Scotland, and also name drop Ken McCleod, a scottish sf writer, as being one of my favourite SF-writers. I read ”Night Sessions” in my book circle ages ago and really, really liked it. And then it turned out, that Johan Anglemark and the scottish fan know Ken, and that he was there, and would I like to meet him? I was like.. ”I'm not worthy!”. (Yeah, I got shy.) But Johan dragged me to him (okay, I ran after Johan) and I got to shake Kens hand and talk for a bit.

A little bit later Jukka Halme and we where strolling in the fan village, and I explained to him that I really liked Patrick Rothfuss in the panels. Patrick Rothfuss is the author of ”Wise mans fear” which is really big here in Europe as well as in US. I have not yet read but (of course) plan on doing so. I really liked him in the panels, as he is clever and funny and a Buffy fan like me. Jukka pointed out that Pat (as he calles himself) was in the fan village and asked if I wanted to meet him, but I said no since I really didn't want to bother him as he must be swamped with fans and also, I haven't read his books so I didn't feel worthy. But then the sneaky Jukka stopped, turned around to this guy in a beard and say ”Oh hello Pat, have you met this swedish fan Fia who is really shy but wants to say hello?” Damn you, Jukka. I love you.

Awkwardness ensued, but he was really nice and we had a laugh about being a little drunk. Also, I said hello from my friend Simon who couldn't be there to meet him, but really loves his books. He asked me to thank Simon and to tell him that he was sad he could not be with us. (Simon did not comment on the post I did about this on Facebook, I think he turned into a green eyed monster. ;))

"The Things I Do For Love"
To sum it up, Loncon 3 was about so much more than just meeting your favourite authors and revelling in anglofilia like Dr Who, London dystopias and regency fantasy. It's about meeting friends, new and old, and hang out with the only people in the world who truly understand the side of you that dreams about different worlds, about superheroes and endless wonders. And in the end of the day, when you go back to your hotel room to sleep and dream, it's the memory of those people and the connections you've made that makes you fall asleep with a smile on your face. It's pure love, is what it is.

Me with the fellow swedes Karl-Johan Norén and Martin Andersson

Me and Hanna

Also, if you like this report and want to go to a Worldcon too, you can start by helping Helsinki win the bid for Worldcon in 2017. Trust me, you really want to do this. What YOU have to do is buy a supporting membership to next Worldcon, as only members of next Worldcon can vote for the Worldcon in 2017. Supporting membership is 40 USD which is 276,56 SEK and you get it here. 

And why should you vote for Helsinki in 2017? Not because of the closeness and the fact that this might be a very rare event that may never come to the nordic countries any time in the next ten years or so (although that weighs in too) but because of the finnish fandom, and the fact that they are awesome people. But it should be empathized that mainly, the worldcon bids are from the US, and that makes it hard for some europeans to attend, and this is going to make it easier for europeans to attend and be able to promote future european worldcon bids. And also, the americans are many, we are few, and they are all going to Sasquan (next worldcon) and they're probably going to vote for Worldcon 2017 to be in Washington DC (the competing bid). There's going to be a tough competition, so EVERY VOTE COUNTS! Make your friends vote, make your neighbours vote, make your family vote! Can cat's vote? If so, make them! 

Let's make it happen!