Your mission should you choose to accept it

[firecat]

This 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?

Comments

[sistercoyote.livejournal.com]

I think that, if I'm going to be completely honest about it, part of the reason fandom scares me has to do with introversion and my reluctance to be lumped in with any particular group. That said,

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.

[firecat]

Thank you. I need to write another post about my personal history with fandom/being a fan of various things, because it ties in with why I made this post.

[sistercoyote.livejournal.com]

I will be very interested to read that post. I seldom talk about what few fandom activities I participate in, when I participate, because I worry about boring people.

I think to me in some ways fandom is similar to a shared hobby - I think ljgeoff's "shared community" works. I know that there is Mercedes Lackey fandom for her Valdemar series that has led to some of the fen (plural of "fan," and I have no idea when that came into vogue) getting published in official short story collections. (Queen's Own (http://www.dragonlordsnet.com/qo.htm) is the official fansite.

[jenk]

Durannie

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.

[sistercoyote.livejournal.com]

I've had similar experiences with Duran fans (including walking through an area of LA where we probably really weren't safe). On the other hand, I've met more Duran fans who were Persons in Desperate Need of a Reality Check.

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!