First day of Finncon, the one and (almost) only science fiction and anime convention in Finland, is now behind. Saw some excellent and some a little less excellent panels and discussions. My own panel about fan fiction (subtitled "99% of everything is crap") with dlasta and mitzi007 went pretty well. As always, my questions run out in the middle of the panel (since they were so redundant that I had to skip several) and I had to just wing it. But I don't think that anyone noticed ;) We ended to a conclusion that fan fic can't be something that just evolves from point A to point B, point B hopefully being good fic, but it is in fan fiction's nature to gather more A-point fics all the time. So it would be impossible for fan fic even exist without the lousy stuff.

I managed to throw my money to the sellers only 40 euros worth, meaning mostly shonen ai manga. There is only one store in Finland that sells them so it was like "What you see is what you get, and if you liked it, come back next year!" The devils sold mostly of them packed in shrink wrap, so no peeking of the art work! I just had to read the back cover and hope that they would tell something about the manga truthfully. So basically I wanted a school fic but without any teacher-student relationships. Dunno what I bought, eventually, but they took visa! Something good, hopefully?

as there is an anime convention at the same time, the place was swarmed by people in cosplay outfits. I have never seen so many cosplayers in one place. Also, a new fashion in Finland are the doll "companions", meaning basically that teens and adults drag these very pretty and detailed dolls around. Frankly, I think it's pretty creepy. I think that they are beautiful and such, but why drag around a prop that psychologically regress the owner to a fice year old? when I collected My Little Ponies, I sometimes combed them and primped them, but it was not like I would have carried one with me at all times! There was even a lecture concernign the dolls, and I would have liked to see it to learn what it was all about, but I had to be somewhere else at the same time. Maybe next year, then.