Once upon a time in fandom
May. 6th, 2010 06:51 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
neadodsOnce upon a time, when the world was younger and I was younger still, the only way to get fanfiction that you hadn't written yourself was to buy a zine, and the only way to buy a zine was to go to conventions.
And THE convention for zines, no matter what your fandom was, was Media*West. I'd save every penny I had - at $20 a pop, the money went fast. (That's why it was more than an ego rush to get published yourself. It was one less copy to have to buy!) And the zines went even faster - back in the very early days, when many of the zines still smelled of corflu and the accepted practice was to print all the copies up front on spec - print runs were small and zines could sell out on Thursday night before the con even opened. (Then fandom got savvier but print runs got even smaller, because things went to print on demand and it was even harder to get copies.)
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boogiebabe_smap and I would take zerox boxes and try to fill them up with what we found in the dealer's room and the hall crawl and our comp copies, and no matter how many I got, I'd read all through them before the end of June and couldn't imagine how I'd wait until next Memorial Day for my fix.
I often get nostalgic about the way fandom was right before Media*West. I'm finding myself particularly nostalgic this year.
This year, when I'm not driving to Michigan for the first time in over 20 years.
This year... when I'm boxing up all the old zines and putting them in the basement. Oh, I'm not getting rid of them. Whoever executes my will is going to have to figure out what to do with all those old Real Ghostbuster and KF-TLC zines, not to mention the pile of Beauty and the Beast ones that's double my not-insignificant body weight.
But I'm doing a lot of cleaning and a lot of pruning, and the brutal truth is, I haven't read fanfiction on paper in almost a decade now. These days the question isn't "how do I find shelf space for the new zines?" it's "how do I get fanfic from the internet onto my ipod touch?"
And THE convention for zines, no matter what your fandom was, was Media*West. I'd save every penny I had - at $20 a pop, the money went fast. (That's why it was more than an ego rush to get published yourself. It was one less copy to have to buy!) And the zines went even faster - back in the very early days, when many of the zines still smelled of corflu and the accepted practice was to print all the copies up front on spec - print runs were small and zines could sell out on Thursday night before the con even opened. (Then fandom got savvier but print runs got even smaller, because things went to print on demand and it was even harder to get copies.)
boogiebabe_smap and I would take zerox boxes and try to fill them up with what we found in the dealer's room and the hall crawl and our comp copies, and no matter how many I got, I'd read all through them before the end of June and couldn't imagine how I'd wait until next Memorial Day for my fix.I often get nostalgic about the way fandom was right before Media*West. I'm finding myself particularly nostalgic this year.
This year, when I'm not driving to Michigan for the first time in over 20 years.
This year... when I'm boxing up all the old zines and putting them in the basement. Oh, I'm not getting rid of them. Whoever executes my will is going to have to figure out what to do with all those old Real Ghostbuster and KF-TLC zines, not to mention the pile of Beauty and the Beast ones that's double my not-insignificant body weight.
But I'm doing a lot of cleaning and a lot of pruning, and the brutal truth is, I haven't read fanfiction on paper in almost a decade now. These days the question isn't "how do I find shelf space for the new zines?" it's "how do I get fanfic from the internet onto my ipod touch?"
no subject
Date: 2010-05-13 05:09 pm (UTC)I was bringing up VV*C to point out a thriving con based entirely around fanvids as evidence that the ability to A) share one's vid with thousands of viewers at one's own personal convenience, rather than having to haul it to a con to show to an audience and B) download vids to one's heart's content from home at any point in the year have not in fact killed the drive to A) bring out special vids to premiere at a con and B) journey to a con to see vids in an auditorium full of fellow fans. The internet has not killed the con vid show as a phenomenon.
So, yeah, definitely in agreement that the internet has killed MW*C -- in that it's killed zines and MW*C was the big zine con. Dragon*Con and Comic*Con have been bringing in record crowds in recent years, though I think most of that has to do with the media guests that MW*C deliberately doesn't mess with. But VV*C is one example of how to maintain fannish interest despite being a fan-only gathering -- if MW*C started amping up their focus on areas of fandom that the internet hasn't killed (and if the hotel's new management got a clue,evidently) they might be able to make a comeback.
no subject
Date: 2010-05-13 05:26 pm (UTC)I'd say that the availability of vids on the Internet, plus the controversy over splitting gen and slash vids, plus the availability of other targeted conventions combined with vidding being only one track of MW*C all contributed.
I agree that MW was a big zine con, but it was thriving well into the electronic publishing age - I've lost track of how many "print v computer" panels I was on. I think that its dwindling for a lot of reasons (the economy certainly isn't helping) but I still think the Internet is a big part of that because the Internet provides the *entire* experience you got from MWC - not just fanfic, but interaction with other fans, vids, fan art, etc.
Specific sub-interests - vidding, costuming, fandoms - they're all going to stay a lot longer because talking online is no substitute for talking face to face. Getting the audience reaction live is something that the Internet can't really ever replace.
There's one thing that MW really provided that I'll miss, though - because it was 100% fan-run without guests, it was an excellent weathervane for the hot shows. With the Internet's self-Balkanization and guest cons drawing people specifically interested in the guest, having a non-fandom-specific, non-group-specific con was handy for seeing which way the wind was blowing.