Slashcon
Slashcon is a mini-convention held once or twice a year at the Fairbridge, just outside of Perth.
What is Slashcon?
Slashcon is the irregular Western Australian convention held in celebration of "slash" fanworks, ie. homoerotic fanfiction, songvids and fan art.
Slash is named for the virgule punctuation which indicates a romantic pairing: Kirk/Spock or Xena/Gabrielle. The majority of slash fans are women, although people of other genders are welcome to attend slashcon as long as they are pro transformative works and gay equality.
Slashcon was first proposed and organised by Elaine Kemp, with assistance from Cathy Cupitt, in September 2005.
Slashcon 2010
Held at Fairbridge Village, 16-18 July 2010. Guest of Honour: James Butterworth
Slashcon 2008
Held at Fairbridge Village, 20-22 June 2008. First Guest of Honour: angstslashhope.
Advertising flyer posted on slashgropers (22 April 2008).
Slashcon 2006
Held at Fairbridge Village, 5-7 May 2006.
Program
Friday
- 8pm Discussion: Share your shiny new and rare fandoms, or just your latest hot button.
- 9pm Reading: extract from Elaine’s upcoming novel.
- 10pm Reading circle (bring your favourite slash stories, or your own slash stories to read aloud).
Saturday
- 10am The relevance of slash to queer identity (Sandy, Fee)
- 11am Workshop: Art (Elaine)
- Noon Workshop: Icons (Jenna)
- 1pm Lunch
- 2:30pm The joys of het (Elaine, Cathy)
- 3:30pm Workshop: Beta Reading (Fee)
- 4:30pm Creating Canon (Jenny)
- 5:30pm Workshop: Turning Brainstorming into Plot (Cathy)
- 6:30pm Dinner
- 8:30pm Sister Slash of Perpetual Indulgence (Elaine)
- 9:30pm Reading circle (bring your favourite slash stories, or your own slash stories to read aloud)
Sunday
- 10am Discussion: What makes a fandom an uber-fandom (Stargate: Atlantis, Harry Potter)?
Slashcon 2005
Held at Fairbridge Village, 17-18 September 2005.
Program
Saturday
- 2pm How much genre do you like in your slash?
- 3pm Workshop: Vidding (Erika)
- 4pm Workshop: Erotica Writing (Elaine)
- 5pm Workshop: Icons (Jenna)
- 6pm Break for dinner
- 8pm Kinks and squicks
- 9pm Reading circle (bring your favourite slash stories, or your own slash stories to read aloud)
Sunday
- 10am Workshop: Erotica Writing (Cathy)
- 11am The fandom that ate slash—Stargate: Atlantis
Here's a con report written by Elaine:
We arrived at Fairbridge earlier than expected on Saturday, and the management let us in the cottage early, then the influx of slash fans began.
First panel, led by Cathy, was ‘How Much Genre Do You Like in Your Slash?’ We wound up talking about the possibilities for narrative tension inherent in genre situations: magical compulsions, possessions, isolation, combat, gender fluidity, telepathy, mpreg. There was some discussion of how these things applied to RPS, and how RPS had expanded to include AUs and mpreg too.
Next was Erika’s workshop on vidding using freely accessible software. She talked about cutting to the beat or lyrics, flashes and fades, choosing both the song and the footage; and about how to put it all together.
I did a workshop on applied creative writing, focussing on POV and pacing in erotic scenes, using bad examples, then corrected passages, from my own work.
Jenna gave us a crash course in icon making, starting out with cropping and design considerations and moving on to filters and adding text.
We broke for dinner, which was very good and very loud, with a specially decorated apple pie made by <lj user=”caitlen”> for dessert.
After dinner, we sat around in the dark, with only the light from the massed lap tops and the wood fire, and read slash out loud. People drifted off to bed slowly, with Ju staying up most of the night, and James opting not to sleep at all.
After breakfast on the Sunday, Cathy gave a workshop on hot words, and how to use them in an erotic fic. As part of the workshop, there was discussion of physically improbable and impossible fics, and two of the participants felt the need to establish that some things were in fact possible. Apologies for the poor quality of the photos, shrieking with laughter shakes a camera around too much for clear pictures.
The programmed Stargate Atlantis panel didn’t eventuate, as cleaning the kitchen up became something of an urgent issue if we wanted to leave the cottage clean when we checked out.
The con broke even, Fairbridge was a wonderful venue, and at the end of the minicon, we decided to repeat the weekend, perhaps as soon as in 6 months time.
The dedicated writers in the group also talked about returning to stay in a small cottage there for an intensive writing weekend some time in the near future. Who’s interested in joining us for two days of writing?
External links
- Slashgropers
- Slashcon website