No Yaoi News from me this week, instead I’m want to gush over the amazing time I had last weekend at not only my first online convention, but my first 18+ yaoi convention Fujocon! If you follow me on twitter you would have seen that last weekend I was more active than usual posting about all the awesome fun I was having chatting to other yaoi lovers on the discord, making some lovely purchases in the artist ally (and yes I will be making a post when my lovely purchases arrive!) and having a fun and educational time attending panels.
But what exactly was or is (I would so attend this con again if it becomes a yearly event!) Fujocon?
Put together by the lovely ladies behind the BL Garden podcast Fujocon was put together for those who was missing their cons during this time of social distancing, because even though we have to keep our distance fandom can still flourish. Fujocon was a safe space for yaoi fans to have conversations about what we love without backlash and hate, share art, cosplay works and to just have fun in an 18+ environment. As a long time yaoi fan I can tell you one of the biggest issues within the online yaoi fandom is the unfortunate aspect of those not of legal age finding their way into a fandom that they really should not be a part of. No matter how mature you claim to be, 18+ content is 18+ content for a reason, but I am getting off topic I went into further discussion on my views on minors in the fandom in this post.
I would love to say that the con went completely smoothly, but like any new convention there were a few growing pains. Not enough to ruin the con experience, but there were a few moments of technical issues with a few panels and discord games but the con staff were quick to try and fix these problems and they became less frequent throughout the weekend. Also the con staff were so friendly and helpful throughout the whole event so I want to give them a big thankyou!
I myself spent the bulk of my time at the con exploring the discord and talking to fellow yaoi fans, mostly in the NSFW room of course. Over the weekend we talked about a whole lot of different subjects. From our OTP’s and ships, to monster porn and monster dildos. Yes, you read that right, one of the lovely artists I got to talk to makes them for a living and in my opinion their work was far better than anything on Bad Dragon check out there etsy store if you don’t believe me here! But one of the funnest convos for me at least was when we got talking about plushies and well, I mentioned I have a certain plushie in my collection and it turns out a lot of other yaoi fans do too! And those who did not have it in their collection wanted one of their own!
I attended several panels over the course of the weekend, but it was two panels that stood out to me most, these were Toward a History of BL from the lovely James Welker who is living the dream studying BL and Yaoi in Japan omg so jealous of this wonderful man. I loved his panel so much that I ended up ordering a book he was a part of off amazon that I am currently reading and plan to write about later next month right here. The second panel that I had so much fun at was the amazing Yuri on Ice panel which discussed the series, fandom and impact this amazing series has had since it’s release!
I had so much fun over this weekend and was so sad when it came to an end. I met so many amazing people from all walks of life and all over the world. I made new friends which is something that I must confess is not an easy task for me and best of all we can still all talk yaoi together. I really really really want this to become an annual event online. I say online because there are many yaoi fans like myself who are not in a financial position to travel around the world to conventions even if we really want to. This online event was something so special to me and so many others and was a much needed breath of fresh air and fun for all that attended, because now when someone asks me if there was anything good about 2020 I can tell them… I attended Fujocon 2020 and had the greatest time!
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