Red Rose (slash con)
| Convention | |
|---|---|
| Name: | Red Rose Convention |
| Dates: | 1998-2002? |
| Frequency: | every other year 1998-2000-2002 |
| Location: | Telford, Shropshire, UK |
| Type: | fan-run fan con |
| Focus: | slash, multimedia |
| Organization: | Red Rose Press |
| Founder: | lexin |
| Founding Date: | 1998 |
| URL: | WayBack Archive Link to 2000 convention page |
| Click here for related articles on Fanlore. | |
Red Rose Convention was a slash multimedia fan-run convention held in the UK from 1998 to 2002.
It was hosted and organized by Red Rose Press.
Attendance numbered around 50.
It billed itself as "an unashamed multi-media 'slash' convention, two days taken out of Real Life to talk about slash without let or hindrance."
Fiction Created for This Con
Most cons generated a con zine which contained fanworks created especially for/distributed at the con. "Red Rose" did not have a separate con zine, but instead included fiction in the program book.
While this convention is very much associated with the zine, Red Rose, that zine was not an official con zine, something that can be confusing.
1998: The First Con
The 1998 con was held July 24-26th at Telford Moat House, Stropshire, England.
A flyer is here; archive link.
The chair person was Ruth Saunders. The guest of honor was M. Fae Glasgow.
This con had a drabble contest, a caption contest, and a raffle.
From a flyer:
The Red Rose Convention is planned to be an unashamed multi-media 'slash' convention. For anyone who doesn't know, slash is the branch of fanfiction which proposes a sexual - homosexual - relationship between two media heroes. For instance Star Trek and Kirk and Spock, Blake's 7, Blake and Avon (or Avon and Vila) Man from Uncle's Solo and Kuryakin or The Professionals and Bodie and Doyle. The convention has not been advertised directly in the fannish press, and we ask you to pass this flyer only to like-minded friends. If you have a problem with slash, please don't register!That warning out of the way, we think we can offer you a pleasant, peaceful weekend in the company of some of the friendliest people you are ever likely to meet.
[...]
We've planned some fun items for the programme. These include, "Just a (slashy) minute," loosely based on the radio panel game, where the panel try to speak for - one minute without repetition, deviation (!) or hesitation on a subject set by the chair, and "Dream slash," a light-hearted game/discussion, where we decide on an ideal couple, or possibly talk all the way around it without making a decision. We've also planned more serious discussions for instance: "Does your mother know?" - just what are you going to tell your family and friends about where you are? - and "It's pornography - go on, admit it!" which is intentionally contentious.
We've a wide-ranging video programme with old, new, borrowed (thanks!) and blue. - Well, blue-ish. This will include Trek (all variations), Sentinel, Due South, Blake's 7, MUNCLE and Rat Patrol to name just a few. If there's any show or any - particular episode you'd like to see, do contact us. Particularly welcome will be ideas where you can also bring the episode/show concerned, and it would be lovely if we could include in the programme a couple of lines to say why you recommend this show/episode in particular. We would like to show an episode or two of Homicide - Life on the Streets which has been discussed on the internet recently. If anyone can help, we'd love to hear from you.
We will also be having several illustrated talks from people who will be outlining their favourite fandom, explaining why it appeals to them and showing video clips to illustrate what they mean. If you'd like to do this, please let me know. You will have to prepare your own "clip tape" - this is something we can't do for you! Talks planned so far include Sentinel and Due South.
Competitions will include a "funny T shirt" competition, a caption competition and a quiz. The quiz will be broken up into several sections - "Identify the pairing from this obscure item of fiction" and "Who lives where?" to name but two.
Confirmed (subject to work commitments) guest is M. Fae Glasgow, the well known California-resident Scot. She's really looking forward to coming over and meeting everyone.
[...]
"Slash Snakes and Ladders" and "40 Ways...To Be A Slash Hero" will be in the con book [1], as will the programme and the usual stuff. We're also interested in short - items of fiction, and items slobbering over your particular heroes. The deadline - is 1 July 1998 so that we have time to get the book laid out and printed.
[...]
The bloodcurdling warning: The Red Rose Convention is planned to be an unashamed multi-media 'slash' convention. For anyone who doesn't know, slash is the branch of fanfiction which proposes a sexual - homosexual - relationship between two media heroes. For instance Star Trek and Kirk and Spock, Blake's 7, Blake and Avon (or Avon and Vila) Man from Uncle's Solo and Kuryakin or The Professionals and Bodie and Doyle. The convention has not been advertised directly in the fannish press, and we ask you to pass this flyer only to like-minded friends. If you have a problem with slash, please don't register!
That warning out of the way, we think we can offer you a pleasant, peaceful weekend in the company of some of the friendliest people you are ever likely to meet. [2]
1998: Program Book Contents
- Chairman's Introduction by Ruth Saunders (description of the con, rules) (2)
- The Team (chair: Ruth Saunders; technical: Clare Goodall; other stuff: Gloria Lancaster -- short self-descritpions) (3)
- Our Guest (short self-description by M. Fae Glasgow) (3)
- What's happening in the Main Room? (4)
- What's Happening in the Video Room? (5)
- 40 Ways...To Be A Slash Hero (tongue-in-cheek list of tropes) (6)
- Competition Time! (Raffle, Caption Contest, Drabble Contest, Funniest T-Shirt Contest) (8)
- It's Raining Men (Halleluja!) ... by Lindsey Shelton ("In the past eighteen months I have become a dedicated fan of the slash genre. I blame this on two friends (Hi Eileen and Clare) who nurtured my casual interest into a blooming obsession! Slash is taking over my life; both as a reader of fanfiction and a writer of it. My small collection of zines is growing, although it isn't ready yet to compete with either of their impressive libraries of erotica. During this learning experience I have begun to have firm favourites regarding pairing which I've decided to inflict on you. I suppose it will give you some idea of which fandoms I prefer and something to argue about. So in REVERSE order, here are my top ten gorgeous couples.") (9)
- a short flyer for the zine, The Song of Sounds
- The Fiction Zone... (four fics, see 1998: Program Book Fiction) (12)
- The Wave Theory of Slash, a reprint of Lezlie Shell's seminal essay (34)
1998: Programming
From the program book:
Other people - This is a hotel and we aren't the only guests. We're just the only ones who matter. Despite that, please don't leave zines with pictures around where the public can pick them up, and don't leave them about in your rooms when you believe the hotel staff might see them. If necessary, put the Do Not Disturb sign up. If someone reads a zine despite your reasonable precautions, I tend to see that as their problem, they shouldn't be so prurient!
Badges - All our attendees will be wearing badges, please don't let people who are not wearing badges into our areas however confident they look. Unless they are hotel staff, of course. THIS IS IMPORTANT! We don't all know each other, after all, and we wouldn't want anyone to walk in on anything they weren't expecting. If you lose your badge we can make you out another, but we don't have an inexhaustible supply.
Stewards - To an extent, in a convention as small as this one, everyone is a steward. Please keep an eye on our equipment and don't be afraid to say something if you are at all unsure. Don't leave it to someone else to speak up. A few people have volunteered to steward certain rooms at certain times, to these people we are very grateful, it would be very difficult to run the convention without them.
Library Zines - These have been loaned to the convention by fans, please don't damage them or take them away. We will be having a loans book if you want to take them to your room overnight, and the library steward will sign them back in next day. If you have damaged a zine inadvertently please don't leave us to find out, let someone know immediately. After a great deal of thought, we have decided not to ban drinks or food from the zine library (some folks would practically die of thirst!) but that means people must be even more careful of the zines. And remember that if you do damage a zine beyond repair we might very well ask you to pay for it! If all that sounds a bit off-putting, we're sorry - but many of the zines in the library belong to the committee and the rest belong to their closest friends.
Some programming:
- Just a Minute (The Radio 4 Panel Game, with a slash twist)
- Fire and Ice (The astrological implications of the Blake/Avon relationship)
- Guest Talk: M. Fae Glasgow (The Person Behind the Porn)
- The Deliberately Provocative Panel: It's Porn, Admit It! (What does a fandom need? Apart from the obvious?)
- Quiz (Clever Cogs or Brain Donors -- all should score a few points!)
- Net vs Print (We can't ignore it, it's here to stay. Has net fic changed the face of fandom forever? And yes, we ask The Question: Netfic - crap or what?)
- Build Your Own Fandom ("What does a fandom need? Apart from the obvious...")
- Does Your Mother Know Where You Are? (Have you told porkies about slash, do you fib about fandom? Do the kids think you've popped out for a pint of semi skimmed and a sliced loaf?)
- Kinks and Anti-Kinks (What floats our boat -- what hurls our cookies? And what about the elusive Dopple-Kink -- we should love it, we think we will love it, but when we read it in a story -- argh)
1998: Program Book Fiction
The program book contains four "snippets" written for this con.
- Damn Fool Questions by Gloria Lancaster (Mulder/Skinner: a missing scene from the episode, "Redux II") (The X-Files) (12)
- Torrid by M. Fae Glasgow (Mulder/Krycek: "a little something for the weekend from our guest of honor") (The X-Files) (15)
- Happy Birthday by Gloria Lancaster (Mulder/Skinner): "the title says it all") (The X-Files) (19)
- Tea for Two by Gloria Lancaster (Wield/original character: "all MFae's fault for encouraging me to read the D&P novels!") (Dalziel and Pascoe) (21)
1998: Con Reports
2000: The Second Con
2002: The Third Con
The guest of honor was likely Torch.
It took place July 26-28, 2002. An earlier flyer shows it was planned at one point for August 2-4.
The (third) Red Rose Convention is planned to be an unashamed multi-media Slash convention. This is a multi- media convention and a huge variety of fandoms will be showcased here, from K/S (of course!) to just about every other pairing you could think of, and probably some you didn't. The programme will be fairly relaxed, we plan panels and discussions, a video programme of episodes, music videos and other slash interest videos. There will be a convention library, (which I know will include some K/S zines as they are from my collection!), a dealers room and auction as well as various silly games to occupy the evenings. We hope to offer a pleasant peaceful, weekend in the company of some of the friendliest people you are ever likely to meet.The Telford Moat House is a beautiful modern building, (generally wheelchair friendly) all bedrooms are en-suite, with TV, tea and coffee making facilities etc in every room.
The cost of the entire weekend is £196 including: registration at £24, accommodation for Friday and Saturday nights, afternoon tea and evening meal on Friday, all meals on Saturday and breakfast, morning coffee and lunch on Sunday. All accommodation is in single occupancy rooms. You can also come for one night only, the charge for this is £98 and the registration runs either from the start of the convention on Friday to 2pm Saturday or from 2pm Saturday to the end of the convention on Sunday. [4]
Another flyer:
The programme will be fairly relaxed. It will include a video programme of programme episodes, music and gay-interest videos and there will be a convention library and a dealer room. We plan discussions on the slash issues of the day such as: "Why don't slash writers write good female characters", "The first slash story wot I wrote," "Warnings? I don't need no steenkin' warnings," and "Name your slash cliché", and we'll be taking part in games including the perennial favourite Just a Minute."[5]
2002: The Program Book Contents
It contains 115 pages.
- Welcome (2)
- Red Rose Competitions (3)
- Red Rose Facilities (4)
- Fiction (nine stories, one cartoon, one meta, see 2002: Program Book Fiction) (5)
- Advert (107)
- Slash Crossword (108)
- Answers (110)
2002: Programming
Friday
- 2.00pm Registration desk opens - Hello!!!
- 4.00pm Tea
- 5.00pm Panel: The first slash story wot I wrote - ‘Fes up to those early horrors!
- 7.00pm Dinner
- 9.00pm Opening ceremony - And a little ice breaker to get to know each other.
- 9.30pm Game: Just a minute
- 10.30pm Panel: Ugly Bastards - Why do we write slash about the ugly ones?
Saturday
- 8.00am Breakfast
- 9.30am Panel: Warnings - Should we add them, do we need them?
- 10.30am Tea and Guest Talk (Torch)
- 11.30am Panel: Cultural Differences - American shows, English slashers etc.
- 11.30am In Video Room: Song Vid workshop
- 12.30pm Lunch
- 1.30pm Panel: OTT or OTP, OK or N/A - Over the top or one true pairing?
- 2.30pm Panel: Copyright - Pertinent stuff for us all.
- 2.30pm In Video Room: Fandom showcases (k/S and Oz)
- 3.30pm Tea and Auction - Bag that bargain!
- 5.00pm Panel: Bad Fic! No Biscuit! - why do we write deliberately bad fic?
- 6.00pm Panel: Where to draw the line? - Is there anything we shouldn’t write?
- 7.30pm Dinner –Please dress up a little, no jeans and T’s unless you must!
- 9.00pm Panel: Name your cliché – Not another one where...
- 10.00pm Game: Slash Pictionary
Sunday
- 8.00am Breakfast
- 10.00am Guest Talk (Torch)
- 11.00am Slash Masters of the Universe - Fandoms do battle!
- 12.30pm Lunch (plus a little bribery and corruption)
- 1.30pm Slash Masters of the Universe: Final
- 2.00pm Closing ceremony
- 2.30pm Game: Slashy consequences
- 3.30pm Panel: Brainless Blonde or scary stalker - acceptable fannish behaviour?
- 4.30pm Close - Goodbye...
2002: Program Book Fiction
- Sleeping in the Rain, fiction by Gloria Lancaster (X-Files) (5)
- Celebration by Elise Madrid (Star Trek: TOS) (11)
- The Detention by Lexin (Harry Potter) (15)
- Wild Ride by Lucy Lastic (Sentinel) (19)
- He Said it That Knew it Best by Lexin (Harry Potter) (31)
- Mein Sehr Geehrter Herr by Cassie lngaben (Eroica) (55)
- Prodding Avon by Julia Stamtord and Predatrix (Blakes 7) (74)
- Reward by Gloria Lancaster (Sentinel) (83)
- The Beginner's Guide to Blakes 7 Slash by Manna (85)
- Shadow by Deanna Gray (Star Trek: TOS) (88)
- Strip Cartoons by Cassie Ingaben (Eroica) (105)
2002: Con Reports
We had several interesting panels - Torch, a scarily good and prolific writer from Sweden, gave a couple of talks, one of which I missed because I was talking about torture over tea in the slash library with a couple of friends but the one I went to was fascinating. She had a bunch of writing tips that she wanted to share with us and get feedback from good writers. We didn't get as far as the feedback, but I enjoyed listening to her sense of what makes a good story, and was interested to find that she doesn't do plot outlines either.We had a panel entitled 'Where Do You Draw The Line' which was less interesting than it might have been, largely because it got sidetracked into a discussion on child porn, underage sex, and child abuse. I was hoping for a discussion on those moments where you realise you have come to a line that you as a writer really don't want to cross, and what happens then? But listening to people talking let me summarise it into three areas - there is your own personal sense of I-can't-write-this, there is your feeling of what is morally right and wrong, and there is your knowledge of what is legally allowed and where you run legal risks in publishing. One writer talked about how she finds rape fantasy very erotic, and yet when she writes a rape scene in one of her stories, even though the reason she thought of the rape scene is because the idea was erotic to her, she always tries to make the rape as unerotic as she can she likes rape in one sense, she hates rape in another sense, and her values (her feeling that rape should not be eroticised) are more compelling than her erotic feelings for rape. I found this put into words a dilemma of my own I enjoy master/slave stories in the same way as she enjoys rape stories, but whenever I write a master/slave situation social conscience/sense of realism kicks in real life slavery is not erotic.
We played slash pictionary which is always fun with a large group, because someone guesses the word inside five minutes and Fan Bingo (49 panels each with something that was true for at least one con attendee) as an icebreaker on Friday night. (There were 68 attendees.) I got all 49 signed off because I cheated and got a member of the hotel staff to sign the one that said I have never read a zine before....
The main event of Sunday at Red Rose... was the Masters of the Universe competition. We, the Pros gang, had entered this mob-handed. We were up against Sentinel, Blake's 7, Harry Potter, Hercules, Star Trek (The Original Series) and Star Trek Voyager. Having not done any thing like this before, wed decided to opt for the over-the-top approach there were at most two representing the other fandoms, and at least six of us. The Sentinel presentation included some song vids, the Blakes 7 some filk singing, and the Harry Potter constant reminders that Alan Rickman was involved! Meanwhile we were all sitting nervously waiting our turn, with [name redacted] looking particularly uncomfortable in her hired fancy dress outfit." [6]
References
- ^ "Slash Snakes and Ladders" is not in the con book, but the other item is.
- ^ from here; archive link
- ^ comments by Aralias, see full post at Lots of not very good zines, November 13, 2015
- ^ from The K/S Press #60 ()
- ^ Cite error: Invalid
<ref>tag; no text was provided for refs named:0 - ^ from DIAL #23, note: the con included a presentation called "Ten Reasons to Love the Professionals." And about the Masters of the Universe competition: "Well, we managed to make everyone laugh, so it was definitely a success on that front, but when we came to the voting after lunch (when all the bribing and further canvassing was done) we had no chance. We were hopelessly outnumbered by Sentinel fans..."