Sunday at @redemptionconvention was a quieter day for me - I spent the morning catching up with a fandom friend who I hadn’t seen in a while, which was really nice, then went to see Thief of Bagdad. @aikainkauna, of course, has long won me over into shipping Jaffar/Princess rather than the canon ship Ahmad/Princess, but I also ship Ahmad/Abu like burning now! (Tempted to nom it for Yuletide this year.)
Disney’s Aladdin stole this film hook, line, and sinker, down to the the framing of certain shots, character names, and pretty much the entire performance of Conrad Veidt as Jaffar. Veidt plays this glorious menace of a man who somehow at the same time as he’s terrifying you, you feel safe???? I do not pretend to understand the whys of this.
After Thief of Bagdad, I went back to my room, but was tempted out again with a message from my husband telling me to come to the charity auction because, “there are zines!” Um, so I bought nearly all the zines. They were mostly McGyver, Sentinel, Star Trek, etc, and I really need to properly sort them out now that I’m home. That was so much fun, even if I suspect that I am terrible at auctioning, because it was really obvious what I wanted. But hey, it was for Asthma UK, so a good cause.
Then followed a rest, and after that the Closing Ceremony, which was emotional and awkward and adorable and just lovely in all the ways that geeks can be. In the Green/Purple wars, Green won, despite a late attempt at a surge from new rival Gold (the concom). And Missy was declared the Ruler of the Universe for the next two years, and rightly so, I for one welcome our new Time Lady overlord.
And then, the long-awaited femslash discussion, which was hilarious mainly because @aikainkauna was absolutely snockered (that’s a technical term), and we kept wandering off topic to discuss Conrad Veidt and boobs and how old people were and the Arabic perfume she was wearing and gender identity. But the parts that were on topic were really valuable and good - it was always, as ever, fun to go on about Tolkien femslash, and I talked about wanting darker, kinkier femslash, and how femslash is finally getting to the point where it’s not just confined to the obvious fandoms but can be found in most fandoms these days.
And that was pretty much the end of Redemption for me! I was exhausted (due to not getting enough sleep the night before), so after we had a quick dinner we went back to the room, packed up as much as we could, and went to bed.
The next day was the long drive home, over snowy mountains, to finally be reunited with @rey-the-ragdoll, who was annoyed with us for leaving for approximately 10 minutes, then forgave us and cuddled up with me when I went to bed.
Next Redemption is in 2019, and I have plans for it. We’ve signed up to go already, and I intend to help make it happen. One of these years I’d like to run my own convention, but in the meantime I would like to start by reviving some of Redemption’s former ‘slash track’ (as it was known) as a ‘fanfiction track’ in 2019, and get more conversation going about fic. One of the best parts of Redemption is that it’s for everyone, so I can have my porny slashfic and writing discussions, my husband can have his SF and technical interests catered for, and we don’t have to go off to separate cons to do it.
So basically, if you’re in the UK, would like a friendly, relaxing, geeky convention that’s based around fans having a fun time together chatting about various aspects of fandom for a few days, would like to stay in a really nice hotel in Sheffield, and come home revitalised and refreshed, I really cannot recommend better than Redemption Con!
