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firecatThis is coming up for me as a result of a combination of things, including: having started to read Star Trek the Reboot fanfic, conversations I heard at Wiscon, and posts I saw today, including this one.
Describe science fiction fandom.
Describe media fandom.
What fandoms do you consider yourself to belong to or feel some affinity with?
What terms do you use to describe them?
Describe science fiction fandom.
Describe media fandom.
What fandoms do you consider yourself to belong to or feel some affinity with?
What terms do you use to describe them?
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Date: 28 May 2009 08:26 pm (UTC)I'm involved in the Phantom of the Opera fandom, and to a lesser degree LOST (i.e. I follow it regularly and read/participate in a big LOST forum.) Also, have written fanfiction in both, although far more in POTO.
Well, trying to be nice re: terms. Sometimes fans can get a bit ... fanatical? i.e. not stopping to catch a breath & realize that not everyone sees a story, characters, etc. the way you do. (Am thinking of violent passions aroused by "ship wars," for instance.)
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Date: 28 May 2009 08:27 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 28 May 2009 09:17 pm (UTC)Would you like me to point you to some Harmonian vs. Damn, can't remember the term wank (that would be the people who think that Harry and Hermione belong together vs. people who can understand the English language and understand that Ron and Hermione were intended to be a couple pretty much from the get-go)? Or perhaps some Edward/Bella vs. Jacob/Bella wank?
There's non-canon ship (relationship) war wank out there, too, but those are the ones that really stick in my mind.
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Date: 28 May 2009 09:21 pm (UTC)OK, so a ship war is an argument about which pairings in a particular book/show are...canon? (If you need to point me to the wank to answer this, go ahead.)
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Date: 28 May 2009 09:27 pm (UTC)I'm going to put a link to Fandom_Wank in my other post; you can browse through there (the Harmonian wank has its own community, however) to get some ideas.
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Date: 28 May 2009 09:29 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 28 May 2009 09:44 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 28 May 2009 10:14 pm (UTC)IMO these "ship wars" break out because the stories which inspire them simply don't satisfy many fans' sense of "proper mythology;" i.e. like a fairy tale with the Wrong Ending. Their attempts are in many cases directed to 'fixing the mythology' by rewriting the story in a different direction.
Personally I steer clear of those kinds of battles, although I do try to understand in my fandoms why they happen.
And yes, Ship Wars lead to Wank... :D
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Date: 28 May 2009 08:42 pm (UTC)As for the rest:
Sci-fi fandom: a group of people who enjoy science fiction across media.
Media fandom: I don't actually know a lot about media fandom but it seems to involve products that are serial in nature presented in not-book formats.
I don't belong to any specific fandoms. I am a fan of many things but a lot of fandom behaviors are a barrier to my participation in a group setting.
There was an interesting Book Fandom vs. Media Fandom panel one morning that determined, in too many instances, book fandom was being used as shorthand for old hidebound conservatives while media fandom was everyone who was progressive and with it when it comes to technology. *laugh* I do think book fans tend to be a little less involved in immediate response when it comes to online stuff.
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Date: 28 May 2009 09:15 pm (UTC)have you read any of mine? ;)
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Date: 28 May 2009 09:18 pm (UTC)Where is yours, if you don't mind? Because now I want to read it!
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Date: 28 May 2009 09:25 pm (UTC)Here's my
That's:
Pushing It (Kirk/Spock, Soft NC-17, essentially non-con but no actual sex occurs, breath play, an interpretation of what's going on in Kirk's mind when Spock's strangling him on the bridge)
No Complaints (Kirk/McCoy, really soft PG, some kissing, no sex, Kirk tries to get a reluctant and bruised McCoy to talk to him during their Academy days)
and
A little untitled drablet about what's going on in McCoy's head when they're on the shuttle to the space dock.
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Date: 28 May 2009 11:40 pm (UTC)My own reboot drabble, no sex, is here. (http://ljgeoff.livejournal.com/255998.html#cutid1)
I never got into the HP stuff, but I'm big into DW.
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Date: 28 May 2009 11:41 pm (UTC)Also, because I forgot to mention it earlier, I'm working on a Mirror!McCoy/Standard!Kirk fic at the moment, but I won't be posting it until some time in June.
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Date: 28 May 2009 11:53 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 28 May 2009 11:54 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 28 May 2009 11:57 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 29 May 2009 12:20 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 28 May 2009 09:15 pm (UTC)Fandom scares the hell out of me (despite the fact that I have been unashamedly writing fanfic lately) and so I don't consider myself to belong to any particular fandom nor do I feel any affinity with any particular fandom. I consider myself to be a "fan of" a particular show, actor, or band, but wouldn't consider myself part of that fandom.
Well, okay. I occasionally refer to myself as a Browncoat or a Trekkie, but that's usually in a context where I know the person will understand what that is and don't have to worry about defining things further. I am not, and have never been, a Durannie.
I don't often use a specific term to reference the things of which I am a fan, other than their names.
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Date: 28 May 2009 09:18 pm (UTC)Why does fandom scare you?
Is a Browncoat or a Trekkie a fan of a particular show, or a member of a fandom, or both?
What is a Durannie?
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Date: 28 May 2009 09:35 pm (UTC)I know that 90% of fans out there are absolutely sane and probably wonderful people. But I've both encountered a few psychos in my own time in fandom, and also I read fandom_wank (http://www.journalfen.net/community/fandom_wank/) from time-to-time (and I comment over there as well) and the people that the Fandom_Wank folks (also known as "wankas") point out really scare me, because their grasps on reality are tenuous at best.
A Browncoat is a fan of the Joss Whedon show "Firefly." They have named themselves, and the name they chose was the losing side of the war in that particular show's universe. Browncoats actually scare me less than other groups, because they do seem to be largely sane. (In fact, a lot of the Browncoat stuff I've seen has been charity work.)
A Trekkie is a member of the Star Trek fandom (which is the same as being a fan of the show). I don't actually consider myself a hard-core Trekkie, despite the fact that once upon a time I had a copy of the Starfleet Academy handbook and a bumper sticker that said "This car runs on impulse power." The hardcore ones are the ones who speak Klingon and who are in the process of translating various Earthly works into said language, and who have hours-long arguments about whether or not the replicator was malfunctioning when X event happened. Unlike the Browncoats, Trekkies did not name themselves (the name was originally an insult applied to those folks who wrote the studio to save the show) and some Trekkies will insist they be called "Trekkers." As I am a believer in letting people call themselves what they will, I do so.
I just realized that I don't think there are fandom names as such for fans of Tolkien/LOTR and Star Wars. Not sure why that is.
A Durannie is a fan of the band Duran Duran, but when I use it I tend to apply it to the kind of disturbing and disturbed fan who would have crushed others to get closer to the stage, for example, or (to use an actual example) who would use sex to have the room service guys sneak them up to the band members' rooms. A Duran groupie, in essence, which I think is different from a fan of the band.
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Date: 28 May 2009 09:37 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 29 May 2009 12:00 am (UTC)I think to me in some ways fandom is similar to a shared hobby - I think
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Date: 28 May 2009 11:05 pm (UTC)Heh. Springsteen fans are sometimes called tramps (from the line "tramps like us" in Born to Run) but also just, you know, Bruce fans.
I will note that I felt no fear walking from Madison Square Garden to my hotel in Times Square at midnight within a couple knots of Bruce fans, even though I'd never met them before. "Hey, you were at the show?" "Yeah, I came from Seattle." "Cool! Hey, are you on the mailing list?" Etc.
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Date: 28 May 2009 11:17 pm (UTC)Possibly the safest I've ever felt was in the midst of a group of Highlander fen - and I've never been a member of the fandom!
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Date: 28 May 2009 09:42 pm (UTC)Media fandom is a similar group of people only the hook is a tv show (fiction or 'reality') or fim(s) or anime. I don;t consider myself a media fan, though I have some tendencies.
I call myself a skiffy fan because it amuses me.
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Date: 28 May 2009 09:45 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 28 May 2009 11:51 pm (UTC)Maybe you could say that it's people who fall in love with make-believe worlds; make-believe that goes beyond the usuall storytelling creation of characters to the make-believe of realities.
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Date: 29 May 2009 11:57 am (UTC)Media fandom seems to consist of people with a shared interest in SF shows and fanfic. I don't know much about it.
I'm a science fiction fan, and that's how I describe it.
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Date: 29 May 2009 04:49 pm (UTC)HAHAHAHA! Yes.
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Date: 29 May 2009 09:54 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 29 May 2009 10:16 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 29 May 2009 11:53 pm (UTC)Spent three years of my life doing more things that you can count in LOTR fandom incl. meeting and hanging with celebs and film crews, costuming and performing, art, and reading/writing fanfic. To describe fandom I'd say it's a media phenomenon in any format that becomes a hobby.
Fandom is fun and time consuming. It's an opportunity to meet new people and hang out with old friends. It can be expensive. It can also be memorable.
One of the best things about LOTR fandom is that in general it is a very sane, creative, mature, intelligent, and literary group. Tolkien-based stuff goes different places than, you know, something like Pokemon fandom.
My OTP = Sam and Frodo. It's a very typical boring everyday OTP and is practically canon, but S/F shippers get very passionate about their OTP and sometimes there is spillover into "real person slash" which is kind of dumb IMHO. The most stupid thing in the fandom was a massive fandom wank involving a group of ppl called "tinhats" who were convinced that Elijah Wood and Dominic Monaghan were sleeping together. I still scratch my head over that.
YAY ST REBOOT :)
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Date: 30 May 2009 12:26 am (UTC)I really wish I had had LOTR fans to hang out with when I was about 8-12 years old. (Not so much for slash purposes, but I was very identified with LOTR and didn't have anyone to talk to about it except my dad.)
What is "real person slash"? The idea that the actors who play the characters are sleeping together? Hm, that sounds kind of dumb to me too. (I'm all for leaving celebrities' personal lives alone, in general.)
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Date: 30 May 2009 02:34 am (UTC)I used to write bandslash for Duran, but never once have I thought that the real band members had sex with each other. Well, maybe once, but that had more to do with Simon kissing John on stage than anything else. I stopped out of boredom with the band more than anything.
However, a lack of understanding that actor != role does seem to be endemic in a lot of actor!RPS. I never really read other bandslash or bandfic, so I can't speak to it; Duran fans in general seem pretty rational on this point (one of the few places they are, oddly), and the band seems more amused by it than anything. If they'd ever said anything that implied they found it objectionable, I would have stopped.
Man, am I rambling on.
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Date: 30 May 2009 05:35 am (UTC)OK, I can see that...
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Date: 30 May 2009 12:35 am (UTC)Science fiction fandom is the general-purpose catch-all that pulls in everyone interested in all shades of science fiction and fantasy. I usually find so much that interests me at science fiction conventions that I wish I could send multiple instances of myself to catch parallel panels. What attracts me is the joy of playing with ideas, and the chance to learn about cutting-edge developments from people who invent futures (or fantastic pasts) for a living. As an example of ideas at play: one of my favorite regular panelists at BayCon, Pat MacEwen, is a physical anthropologist with a CSI day job who moonlights as an SF writer and does presentations on Alien Sex, where she presents bizarre mating behaviors from terrestrial species and invites the audience to speculate on what an alien society evolved for that would be like, and almost as often she’ll bring people up to date on the latest climate change science.
Media fandom tends to concentrate on particular shows (or genres, in the anime fields), which narrows the field considerably. I don’t really get into individual shows and movies enough that I really feel like there’s much for me at a media convention; from what I see of them, there may be panels on particular anime series, but I have yet to see one like “Shinto Mythology and Tonari no Totoro”, or “Modern Cybernetic Advances and the Works of Masamune Shirow”. I’m the sort who would much rather have a memory of a good conversation with an author than an autograph from them, and I’d be more interested in meeting a scriptwriter who wrote a good story than the actor who performed it.
I don’t have any issues with media fandom or furry fandom; I take the geek hierarchy as a joke. Those things don’t float my particular boat, but I know fun people who enjoy them all.
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Date: 30 May 2009 02:00 am (UTC)There was much talk of this at Wiscon, yes.
“Shinto Mythology and Tonari no Totoro”, or “Modern Cybernetic Advances and the Works of Masamune Shirow”
I would go to those! Why don't media cons have them?
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Date: 30 May 2009 02:25 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 30 May 2009 03:56 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 30 May 2009 07:10 am (UTC)