On September 6th, 2019, some of the All The Writing crew got to go to Fall Fan-X, and now we’re here to tell you all about it, because how can you tell if an event actually happened if you don’t post something about it. In this so-called “article” we will be talking about our experiences at Fan-X, which translates roughly what we liked, what we didn’t like, and what we would have done to improve the convention for ourselves. Also please note that this post is a little shorter than most as it is more an overall review of Fan-X rather than a review of the information we got from the event, which will be put into two separate articles on later dates. And you may be wondering why this is going up on the day of the Area 51 Raid (Friday, September 20th), and that’s because we didn’t want it to take up the place of a normal article, so you get two things to read this week, aren’t you elated. Be elated right now or else.
What We Liked
It was a fun community to be around, most of the people there seemed like they wanted to be there and were having fun doing whatever it was that they were doing. Everybody at the art booths was helpful and nice, some even initiated conversations with us, something that we have not experienced beyond our shed since our summoning into this realm from the Aether. And we didn’t get hunted down if we viewed art and then didn’t buy any, which in our book is a thumbs up.
Speaking of art there were some great pieces there this year, and with our collective empty pockets we were able to buy two pieces of art, one a really cool fantasy tree angel thing made by Angelarium (It’s called Suchlap, Angel of Verdancy and it’s fancy) and another a picture of an owl saying “I am beset by idiots,” made by NatRodgers. Two very different prints, but both will prove vital in our quest for world domination. Jokes aside though we really enjoyed the art, it’s too bad we couldn’t have bought more though.
The panels that we attended we’re really great too, we got enough notes to fill 2 whole articles, so keep an eye out for those. The first one we went to was a panel of bestsellers, of whom we’ll name in the article talking about them for… suspense-building reasons, yeah, suspense-building reasons (it’s definitely not because we lost their names and the site has taken down the schedule, pfft, whaaatever dude, lay off). The panel gave some really good general advice on writing and we’ll be going into more detail on what they talked about when the article goes up on October 3rd. The next panel we went to wasn’t really about writing, more about the career of author Brandon Mull. He was funny while presenting us his career, but he was also very nice to the people who asked him questions afterward. And though we won’t be posting something on Brandon Mull’s panel, we do have one from Teen Author Boot Camp on how to write a great story that you can check out by clicking here. The last panel we went to was one on writing action scenes, something that our team really wanted to learn about, and hopefully some of you need to learn about it as well because we’ll be putting that one in an article too. That article will be posted on the 25th of September. The authors in the panel all sounded like they knew what they were talking about, and their professionalism didn’t stop them from being entertaining either, in fact, we would consider theirs our favorite of the three we went to. So overall the panels were pretty good and informative, and if we go back we will definitely plan on going to more.
Also, we’ve been hearing that this year the cosplayers have really stepped it up a notch, and since we haven’t been to any other years to compare against, so we will agree with this statement blindly and without question. But we didn’t take any pictures with any of the cosplayers, as we we’re too socially awkward to exist in the presence of another being. Maybe that will change if we decide to go back, but probably not. Still some pretty cool lookin’ things out there.
Dislikes and Improvements
What we found is that you really should stay only as long as you have things to do rather than the whole time, because we ended up staying there walking through the art isles over and over again like some sort of lost spirit looking for something to hang in it’s grave. And by the end of it, our feet required a lot of R&R, so maybe adding more seating areas would help, but also plan on wearing good shoes.
Also, we were planning on attending 4 panels when we first arrived, but sadly the first one we wanted to go to was closed right at the cut-off time. So we suggest keeping the panel doors open an extra few minutes longer for those arriving later. What we found is that you should usually start heading over to your panel 5 minutes prior to it actually starting, and to also keep a map at your side so that you’re not confused on where to go.
Also relating to panels, we found that since our going to Fan-X was so last minute that we were unable to properly plan out where we wanted to go, so a lot of time was spent being the aforementioned ghoul of dope art. Though we did get some nice chatter amongst the team, as well as some attempted spying on Tom Holland, we still felt like we should’ve been participating more. And we don’t blame the convention for this at all, in fact, we blame ourselves, so we’re here to offer you advice on how to plan out your Fan-X day.
As soon as you get your ticket you should immediately flock to the Fan-X website (click here if you want to visit that) and hunt down all the celebrities, authors, and artists that you want to meet and/or buy from. After that, you gotta plan out what panels you’re going to, otherwise, you’ll end up like us and trust us on this, we suck. We suggest setting two hours apart so that you can walk through the shop fronts and buy anything you want without hurting your feet too much, and then the rest of the time you can spend sitting on your butt and listening to really cool people talking about really nerdy things. Frickin nerds, going to nerd conventions, we would never, heh, weirdos. Wait for just a seco—oh shoot! WE’RE THE FRICKIN NERDS!
Conclusion
HOW COULD YOU GUYS NOT TELL US THAT WE WERE THE NERDS ALONG! WE TRUSTED YOU! We went to the nerd convention had fun, and then chilled out the rest of the time, and tHE WHOLE FRICKING TIME WE WERE THE NERDS! How dare you let us have a fun experience at the expense of us being nerds. REEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEE!!!!!!
Links
Visit the Fan-X website by clicking here.
