During the weekend, I went north and spent some time with Staples and others. Looking through my notes, I made some about my trip to Supanova

Before the convention
9AM. The clock is ticking. In an hour Supanova will open its doors. I’ve been awake for two hours because two well-meaning and earnest people tend to the lawn with a series of loud distrating powertools. I just couldn’t lay in bed and pretend anymore. I am also covered in cat hair, thanks to Staples’ companion, Phill the Cat.

Elmo and Staples regularly remarked that the convention is really just that one day in the year where all of the modern troglodytes. That they crawl from their rooms and the basements in their parents’ homes and then descend on the showgrounds. Each of them dressed in moldy shirts expressing some forgotten science-fiction trope.

There is a high possibility of this. I do not doubt it. But there is also a thing called cultural broadening. You can see it with Japanese and Korean cartoons on morning shows. Or through the silver screen fodder machine as an idea-starved Hollywood banks on comic books for script material and filthy merchandising.

About 5 years ago I went to a Supanova and felt old. All of these kids were running around in costumes, sporting accessories that I did not understand.

This time around, I am expecting a generation gap to appear. Unlike the past, where fandom connections were made through conventions, it the connections that make the convention. People have a vast array of outlets to be instantly connected, updated and aware of trends and fads and anything that’s new.

So I expect a whole bunch of tweens. Where the girls like to see boys kiss, where boys dress like girls and all of them are clutching their phones like it was a vital organs. I expect people to be dressed in costumes related to cartoons or comics I do not understand and my friends, less so.

After the Fact
I guess this con would have been nice if there were less people, or more space or better organised. Or organised at all. I bought my ticket in advance and yet friends, who didn’t, got in first. I’ve only managed to look at one percent of the show. That’s mostly because of the crush of people happening inside. And because of this crush, this foolish human need to see everything at once, the lack of space provided and the waning air conditioning and the smell, I am completely lost on why I came here in the first place and whether I should come back to another one again. And all it took was five minutes beyond entering the door.

Ultimately, there was nothing to see. I could get most of what I wanted online or locally, and the prices were not competitive. I did end up meeting someone that I hadn’t seen in years and we had a chat about what been happening. But the time came to leave, so when I finally merged with a stream that was headed to the door, I went outside and stayed outside.