Connexions
| Name: | Connexions |
| Dates: | 1999-2005 |
| Frequency: | annual |
| Location: | Baltimore, MD |
| Type: | |
| Focus: | slash, multimedia |
| Organization: | |
| Founder: | April Valentine & Marion McChesney |
| Founding Date: | |
| URL: | WayBack Archive links to various Connexions websites 2003-2005 & Livejournal Community |
| Click here for articles related to this site on Fanlore. | |
Connexions was an annual slash multimedia convention held annually in April in Baltimore, MD. It was open to people over the age of 18. As a fan run convention it did not have professional guests (writers/actors) and all programming was created by fans for fans. It operated as a non-profit and on an all volunteer basis. It ran from 1999 through 2005.
Contents |
Overview/History
Connexions began in 1999 when April Valentine and her friend Marion McChesney decided to put on a East Coast slash convention. At that time, the main slash conventions where held in Chicago (Zebracon) and California (Escapade and Friscon). While the East Coast had several other fan run multimedia conventions (Shore Leave and Eclecticon) none were slash specific.
The convention had to weather several rounds of tragedies: in 2001 Marion passed away suddenly. The following year April Valentine's husband died after a long illness. As a result there were difficulties and delays running the convention. In 2005, the remaining convention organizers decided to take a break and a new East Coast slash convention Con.txt sprang up in its place.
Programming/Events
The convention ran for three days (Fri-Sun) and offered fan run panels, a fanzine dealer's room, an art show and art auction, a print show where fans could buy copies of the displayed art, a vid show were fans could show their songvids before a live fan audience and a formal dress Saturday banquet. In later years the formal dress was expanded to allow fans to wear costumes. In some years a fan written comedy play would also be performed.
Panels
Convention panels ran from Friday through Sunday, with one track of panels.
Programming from the first convention (1999)
Non-fandom specific panels
- 1. Slash in Comedy
- 2. Slash and Religion -- Guilty Pleasure or Just Guilt?
- 3. How do Multiple Hero Shows Develop Shash Fandoms?
- 4. Minor Character Slash
- 5. Angst vs. Mush
- 6. Can They Really Do That? (Minotaur)
- 7. How Do You Keep the Fandom Alive After Your Show Has Left the Airwaves?
- 8. His One True Love -- is it possible to pair a hero with another character
- from the show?
- 9. He Hit Me -- And It Felt Like a Slash Scene -- why enemies attract
- alternately Ally vs. Antagonist)
- 10. S&M and B&D
- 11. How I Got Into Slash
- 12. History of Fandom
- 13. Website Workshop
- 14. Vidding Workshop
- 15. Writer's Workshop
- 16. Pro writing
- 17. Switch-Hitting -- can some characters be tops, bottoms or both?
- 18. Fanon vs Canon
- 19. Canon -- Perception vs Fact
- 20. Editing panel
- 21. What the Heck Does FIAWOL Mean? -- fannish vocabulary explained
- 22. Hottest Sex Scenes -- why are they so hot?
- 23. Getting Your Historical Time Frame Correct
- 24. Men as Slash Fans?
- 25. Why is Slash So Addictive?
- 26. Salt & Pepper combos -- why isn't there more slash?
Fandom Specific Panels
- 1. X-Files -- "The Schmoop is Out There" -- increasingly romantic eps in
- this very dark universe
- 2. Sentinel -- "Jim Ellison -- Top or Bottom and Why?"
- 3. UNCLE -- "New Directions in UNCLE Fanfic"
- 4. UNCLE -- "Why is Illya Always Written Submissive?"
- 5. Sentinel -- Now That We Have it Back
- 6. Sports Night (needs topic)
- 7. Miami Vice -- "Castillo or Tubbs – Who's a Better Fit for Crockett?"
- 8. Due South -- "How did Paul Gross knowing about slash and putting it into
- the show in season 3 affect fans and the show's dynamic?"
- 9. Homicide -- Introduction to Homicide (clip tape and discussion)
- 10. Starsky & Hutch -- "What We Want in Fanfiction"
- 11. Starsky & Hutch -- Charades
- 12. Professionals -- "I Was A Runaway Teenage Impoverished Rent-Boy Working-
- Class Aristo With A Happy Homelife Who Was Regularly Beaten" -- or why the
- lack of canonical backgrounds for Pros characters helps makes Pros fiction so
- diverse.
- 13. Highlander (needs topic)
- 14. Wiseguy – "Beyond Sonny Steelgrave"
Panel schedules from later years: 2003 and 2005.
Plays
In some years, fans would write and stage a play, often poking fun (gently) at their favorite TV shows and one another. In 2000, the comedy play, 'A Hard Drive's Night' was written especially for Connexions by Paula Smith and was directed by Kath Sanders. In 2002, Genetic Fen Productions wrote and produced "Beat Da Geeks" a hilarious parody of the Comedy Central game show, styled for slash fans, by slash fans.
Some of the plays were videotaped and were put on the convention vid show videotape con tape and distributed to the members.
Songvid Show
A songvid show was put on with fans submitting their songvids to be shown before a live audience. Non-attending vidders could mail their vids and, if they gave permission, the vids would be collected onto a single videotape which was then sold to convention attendees. Like many fan run video shows of the time, vids were initially played on a VCR and large screen TV, with the convention switching to DVDs and projection screens in later years.
Very little information was tracked or kept by the convention on the details of their video shows. However, in 2002 one fan compiled a list. Another fan took limited notes in 2003. Vidders in 2004 offered links to their vids at the Connexions Livejournal here.
2002 VID SHOW PLAYLIST
- "Get This Party Started" (S&H)
Anonymous, Song? (Oz)
- "Please Remember" (X-Files)
- "Material Girl" (multimedia)
- "This Kiss" (Sentinel)
- "It's a Kind of Magic" (Highlander)
GloRug (all Sentinel)
- "By Your Side"
- "Dela"
- "Bitch"
- "I Wanna Be Sedated"
- "The Way You Look Tonight"
- "To Make You Feel My Love"
Pam Smith (all SG-1)
- "Get Off"
- "Dead"
sockii (all Brimstone)
- "Satan is my Motor"
- "I Wouldn't Normally Do This Kind of Thing"
- "Tricky Brains"
- "Proud"
- "Shaolin Soccer"
- "Strangers in Paradise" (Fandom ?)
Vidder??
- "You Gave Me the Answer" (Star Trek (Kirk/Spock)
Victoria Bitter (8 LOTR videos)
- "Brothers in Arms" (Lord of the Rings)
Morgan Dawn, personal notes (2002).
2003 PARTIAL FRIDAY VID SHOW PLAYLIST
- (vid about a cop and robber with an eagle?) - (fandom might have been "Once Upon a Time in China"?)
- One Step Closer" (Brimstone)
- "On the Sea" (Horatio Hornblower - Hornblower/Pellew)
- (title not mentioned in notes) (Batman Beyond (animated))
(vidder name not mentioned in notes)
- "I'm a Believer" (Starsky & Hutch)
- "They Can't Take That Away From Me" (Highlander)
- "Don't Let Me Get Me" (The Sentinel)
- "Immortality" (Highlander)
- "My Best Friend" by Harry Nilson (Askewniverse)
- "I can be your Hero" (Starsky & Hutch)
- (Discovery Channel vid) (Starsky & Hutch)
Elke Tanzer, personal notes (2003).
2003 PARTIAL SATURDAY VID SHOW PLAYLIST
- (title not mentioned in notes) (Farscape - John Crichton/Scorpius)
(vidder name not mentioned in notes)
- (an Aretha Franklin and George Michael song) (Stargate SG-1 - Jack/Teal'c)
- Where Are You Going (Lord of the Rings - Sam/Frodo)
Kyle McLogin vids QaF
It's A Beautiful Life Acacia
- Respect by Pink
slashcity (???)
(Queer as Folk vids)
(Smallville vids)
(Babylon 5 vid)
Killa (three vids; at least one was in Horatio Hornblower)
Elke Tanzer, personal notes (2003).
Charity
The convention raised funds to support a variety of charities:
- 1999 - half to the Baltimore County Health Council (which provided support to people living with HIV and AIDS), and the other half to buy bonds for a deceased fan's children.
- 2000 - Baltimore County Health Council
- 2001 - half to the Howard County Fire and Rescue which responded to the 911 call made by Marion McChesney the night she passed and the second charity was the Michael J. Fox Parkinson Foundation.
- 2005 - Reading Is Fundamental
Awards
After the passing of Marion McChesney, the convention decided to honor her memory by creating a series of awards that would recognize fanzine writers, editors and artists. The Sizzler Awards or ('Slash In Zine Literary ERotica')[1] were first held in 2001. The awards were held annually and only members and supporting members of the con were eligible to vote. The awards were divided into fandom specific categories, but there was also a special category recognizing new zine editors, The Marion McChesney Award for Best New Zine Editor.
More info can be found at Sizzler.
Slasher Hanky Code
The Slasher Hanky Code was first developed at a 2004 Connexions panel led by zvi. More here at Slasher Hanky Code.
