Two Fandoms both alike in dignity..

[alias_sqbr]

Two posts I read today, both about "book" fandom versus "media" fandom but actually talking about somewhat different things:

A Tale of Two Natcons about fights internal to Australian con fandom between people into writing and books, and people into tv/movies.

Admitting Impediments: Post-WisCon Posts, Part I, or, That Post I Never Made About RaceFail '09 about (amongst other things) the cultural differences between con-going meatspace fandom and internet based fanfic fandom. (EDIT: while it think this has some good things to say, it's part of a conversation which tends to express itself in irritatingly self satisfied (and as has been pointed out to me, ageist) ways. See the comments here for some discussion on that score)

Since I've been ensconced in the former conflict for much longer, and am a book-reading fanficcer married to a tv-loving fan who only really does fandom offline and hates fanfic, I rebel pretty strongly against the latter being described as "book" vs "media" :) EDIT: As angriest points out, literal Book vs Media conflict isn't THAT big of a deal here in Perth any more. But at least for me that's what comes to mind if you use those terms.

I would say that in Perth fandom you have Book, Tv/Movie, Fanfic, and Anime as four somewhat separate fandoms (and there's probably others I'm forgetting because I'm not in them). Ok that's dumb. But thinking about cultural conflicts I think there's definitely more than two sets of subcultural attitudes. Maybe... Old Skool (often into books and writing), Fanfic/Online, Anime/young. Because the Slasher types don't seem any more in touch with the Waicon/Cosplay etc types than anyone else, so I don't think it makes sense to put them together (and obviously there's cross over between all three, myself for example).

Heh. Thinking about Swancon programming streams and minicons that kind of makes "feminism" a fandom, but I'm not sure that's a useful way to think about it :)

Would other Perthites agree? Is Perth/Australia different in this respect than America or other countries?

I have some thoughts on the actual topics of the posts but am SO blah today. But it's going to be interesting seeing it all come together at Aussiecon.

Comments

[strangedave.livejournal.com]

There was this huge golden age of awesome gaming cons on the east coast through most of the 90s, and Swancon didn't even notice, largely :-) and the only effect was that Swancon incorporated LARPs for a few years.