Kummacon 2024 - "I identify as Canada"

And to the next summary we go! This time I'm actually writing this summary on the very same year the con was held - a huge improvement! ":D"

Okay, enough with the sarcasm and let's get to the point - namely Kummacon 2024 which was a bit different convention for me, mainly because I had actually applied and gotten approved to work as a cosplay competition judge! 

Con building, entrance view. It was nice and sunny for the whole weekend!

 

Kummacon 2024 was held on 18th-19th of May 2024 in Oulu, more specifically in Oulu's International School - just like in previous year. My companion - and photographer - for the con was Shiro Samurai. We both had volunteered to work at the con, he as a green room volunteer and I as cosplay competition judge.
We left for Oulu by train on Friday before the con. I like traveling by trains; it's one of the most easy ways to move from place A to place B and it's also ecological (and also economical). So yeah, me gusta.
...EXCEPT WHEN THERE'S A MOUNTAIN OF STUFF THAT IS HARD TO TRANSPORT.

You see, we had decided to sell some of our stuff on KummaKirppis; both of us have been into cosplay, reading manga etc. for 10+ years now (I'd like to say 15+ years now) and that means a lot of unnecessary stuff had gathered in our apartments - by unnecessary I mean for example manga we didn't read anymore, games we didn't play anymore etc. So we figured: why not to try to sell at least some of the stuff? Someone could find what they were looking for - and we could get rid of the stuff that seriously doesn't even fit anywhere in any logical way.
But transporting all that by train, not to mention our bags, PS5, a monitor etc.? 0/5, can't recommend this experience since it was pretty damn difficult.

Doesn't look like much but I can tell you, that amount of stuff weighed like an African savanna elephant. Not sure which one of the objects seen in the pics weights the most; PS5, our bags, a monitor or my leg.

Luckily the train trip to Oulu only takes like an hour or so. When we arrived at the train station there was a bit of confusion about the location of our taxi I had ordered via app but eventually things got sorted out, we got into the Tesla (that was driven by a very new taxi driver, I remember him telling us that it was actually the first customer ride he had given!) and soon we were at our hotel - the trusted Sokos Hotel Arina at the very center of Oulu.

This time our room was salmon-themed!

We relaxed for a while until one of us exclaimed feeling hungry. We begun to brainstorm where we wanted to eat; originally we had thought about the Itsudemo sushi buffet we had eaten at last Matsucon or the Chinese restaurant near the train station but faced a couple of problems (the former would have likely been pretty crowded at that time of the day and the latter was a bit of a walk away and neither of us had energy for that) so we did the only thing we could do at that very moment: opened Google Maps and begun scrolling restaurants.
After only a couple of minutes Shiro Samurai noticed that literally on the other side of the street was Cantina, a restaurant with Italian cuisine. Since pizza sounded good for both of us we decided to go there - and holy fuck the food was good the only minus was that I took ages eating it because of chewing and swallowing problems! I also had a glass of red wine; I don't usually drink it since it might trigger a migraine attack but this one was light and tasted very good. 

This was DELICIOUS.

After eating we walked back to the hotel, did our dailies and... I guess went to sleep pretty early since we would also have to wake up very early.

On Saturday morning the lag was bad. We were barely able to drag ourselves to have breakfast (but managed just because we had kind of paid for that when we paid for the hotel room) and after we came back to the room it felt almost like a mission impossible to start putting on my costume. I guess I'm seriously getting a bit too old for this or something - at least too old for getting up way too early... But, well, duty called and that was a reason good enough to take a shower and start dressing up as Alicia from Moomin! She has always been one of my favorite characters in the series and well, the costume is easy to wear and I hadn't debuted her earlier so yeah, now was definitely time for that!

A selfie! Non-edited since it would have eaten the little quality there is to begin with (hence why the huge file size).

We took a taxi to the convention place and walked in. Our first mission was to find the green room since Shiro Samurai would spend the majority of his weekend there - and when we asked about it, the directions were pretty much like this: "Go down the stairs, see that the door doesn't get locked, and walk down the dark corridor to find the green room - nobody has found a light switch in the corridor yet so feel free to look for one." :'D We navigated with those directions and found the smol green room pretty soon.
I decided to sit there for a while to keep Shiro Samurai company since I didn't have anything better to do at that point of the day; the cosplay competition judging would begin in the afternoon so I had hours only lonely of spare time and didn't really want to spend all of them alone.

A couple of pics from the Artisans' Alley. At the time it wasn't so crowded but most of the day it was hard to move around there.

 

I think I paid a few visits to both Artisans' Alley and Artists' Alley during the morning (and in the beginning of the day we had also dropped some stuff at the con's flea market) but it was very, very crowded and warm and I could feel my anxiety creeping up. I quickly decided to hang out in more calm places before seeing this year's guest of honor, Magdalena Hai. She is one of my favorite youngster/young adult literature writers and she didn't let us down with her wonderful speech about a writer's power and responsibility! <3

I also gathered up courage and talked to her - she was so nice! We even took a selfie together but I'm not going to post it here since the quality is... Hideous.

After Hai's speech I decided to walk around for a while before it was my time to start working. I decided to check the downstairs of the building, mainly the lobby area where there were a few merchants - including Niramuchu Art & Design from who I have bought a few pieces of jewellery and key chains - and the info desk.

Said info desk and some congoers.

Kummacon is a LGBTQ+ friendly con and it shows! <3

Kummacon is also a visibly LGBTQ+ friendly convention and it shows; they actually also host queer literacy themed panels and everything! It's so important that people under the rainbow - no matter where there they are - have a safe space and feel welcome I guess it goes without saying at this point that I'm also one of them since I've been pretty open about it since the very beginning. It saddens me a lot that it's literally year 2024 and safety still isn't granted without objections for people who belong in the minority, be it because of gender, sexual orientation, skin color or whatever the reason. If anything it seems that world is filling with hatred once again; all the wars, politics, everything indicates that way. This is apparently not a good time to be alive.
But yeah, let's continue before I get too stuck on Doomsday scenarios that aren't really relevant to this summary lol.

Anyway, soon it was time to start the judging. I was one of the three, the other ones being Reetta and Yuri who were both so nice to work with! We had 9 contestants in total (would have been more but a few didn't show up) and I must say that it wasn't an easy decision to make who would get a prize! Kummacon's cosplay competition is pretty low-threshold and a lot of the contestants were beginners, just as I expected - and in my opinion each one of those who go to the stage in front of the audience are winners, it's not that easy especially for the first time! <3
After the cosplay contest - that went quite smoothly - I begun to feel a bit worn out and tired. I'm not sure if it had anything to do with the warmth and all but yeah, I just felt like I would like to go to the hotel already... But I couldn't. 

And why is that?
Well, one reason was that Shiro Samurai hadn't finished working for the day. The second reason was that I had my own program to host: a book talk called "Mitä tänään luettaisiin?" ("What should we read today?")! I do book talks as a part of my job as a librarian anyway so I figured that I could host one in Kummacon too - especially since the con also concentrates on literacy. For those who don't know, a book talk means someone giving book/reading suggestions to the audience. I had a few people listening to my suggestions; thank you for coming to listen to me and not caring about PowerPoint that decided to throw a tantrum and not work <3
After the book talk I went to the green room... And a weird conversation took place. I can't remember every detail of it but it started with discussing about Eurovision, different genders and identities (and I would like to point out that everyone who discussed the topic was open-minded and respectful even though our humor was pretty tired at that point of the day). Pretty soon the discussion... Escalated a bit and I think someone said something along the lines "But you must always remember that the right answer is Canada" - this has a lot to do with a Finnish humor show called Kummeli where one character always answered "Canada", no matter what the right answer was. I did a quick math in my mind and quickly participated in the conversation by saying "So nobody can fight me if I just say that I identify as Canada since it will always be the right answer!". That made a couple of people laugh :'D

At some point we could finally call ourselves a cab - but not before taking some proof pics of my Alicia cosplay! <3 I will post the pictures in a separate post.
When we got to the hotel I could feel screaming food and coffee needs... So we first walked to a nearby Hesburger, ate some nuggets I guess I would really need a rehab or something and then went to Coffee House, a café located in Kauppakeskus Valkea.

So delicious <3

I can't remember what we did after our coffee moment but I don't really think we did that much, likely packed some of our stuff and went to sleep since we were both pretty tired.

I don't have that much to say about Sunday - except that I got promoted to work as another green room volunteer so Shiro Samurai could have his scheduled breaks. If I have anything negative to say about Kummacon, it's the fact that there were not enough people working there. It's not Kummacon's fault really - it's hard to get people to work at conventions, especially at ones that have a free entrance to begin with. It's also a fact that life these days is a lot more stressful and hectic than it was for example 10 years ago so people are more tired and literally just want to have fun on their days off - and there is nothing wrong with that! However, conventions also need their volunteers so the events can be held and everything can be done as smoothly as possible. So if you ever want to try out working in a convention and are able to travel to Oulu, I could really suggest working at Kummacon; I'm very likely to volunteer next year too! <3
Sunday was a bit hectic and stressful and let's just say that I won't write everything that happened here (I'm, unfortunately, quite temperamental especially when I'm tired and Shiro Samurai had the not-so-wanted "privilege" to enjoy it - still sorry about that). However everything got sorted out eventually so yeah, a happy ending and so on.

I still had some time to walk around on Sunday too; you can see Onismi Apparel's booth in the picture.

When the con closed its doors we helped around a bit (namely with cleaning up the green room and hoarding food that would have otherwise gone to waste) and left since we had a train to catch.

...except that the train was late for at least an hour since someone had decided to end their life (or at least tried to do so) in Helsinki by jumping on the tracks and getting hit by a train - at least we assume that is what happened since the reason for the train being late was "personal injury" which is the nicer way to say someone has tried to do something like that. I know that right now it's very difficult to get any help for mental health problems, especially in Southern Finland so it's no wonder that people suffer... However, jumping on the tracks doesn't solve anything. Find someone who listens to you and helps you carry the burden of life until you get the help you need. Darkness isn't eternal - even if in that very moment it felt like it.
When we finally got to Kemi I drove Shiro Samurai home and spent a night at his place since I was too tired to drive back anymore. That was the end of our Kummacon journey this year - and yes, I'm definitely going to attend next year too, maybe even volunteer if I have time! <3 The journey this year definitely had its bumps yet it also had bright highlights; overall I enjoyed the con and the weekend overall.

I still have a couple of con summaries to write but I'm finally catching up with my posting schedule! Next one will be a Nekocon 2024 summary - stay tuned! <3 

Until next time.

-Firith