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

[http://users.livejournal.com/peasant_/]

I think it helps to think more in terms of sets. Each individual fan will belong to many sets - fandom for show x, fandom for show y, fandom for book z, interested in social justice, vegetarian, likes yellow - and in some cases those sets may overlap to a considerable degree, thus giving the false impression that 'everyone' in X fandom cares about social justice or likes yellow, or whatever. It is always easier to see the overlaps because by definition that is where you as an individual are standing - to notice the non-overlaps you have to really look up and peer into the distance. And it is none of it ever a binary, but always a highly complex interlocking pattern.

The problem is people like thinking in binaries - it is an easy and natural way for us to think. So they create a false sense of tribe where one shouldn't exist and then get defensive and have the potential to be hurt when apparent members of their tribe deviate from what they had expected. I know I get a lot of trouble with people who assume that because they agree with my opinion on Spike and Angel I must share their outlook on everything from politics to fashion - and they can seem genuinely hurt when they discover I don't.

Personally from where I was standing the idea that everyone in 'media' fandom was even aware of racefail, never mind if they understood the discourse, while everyone in 'book' fandom was 'failing' is nonsense - even taking her approximate definitions of media and book as not literally meaning liking media as opposed to liking books.

[alias_sqbr]

I think it's valid to make generalisations in principle, certainly stuff like "fanfic fandom has more women in it than mainstream sf fandom". But I agree that people (a)Mistake their experience with people on their flist as being true for all of fanfic fandom and (b)Go from "this is the way things tend to be" to "This is the way things always are and should be" (as I ranted about in my next post)

And yes, it's not really a binary anyway. I think my experience is more neatly divided since it's between online American dominated fanfic fandom and local australian based con-fandom, and even then it fuzzes at the edges pretty significantly.