Here’s a roundup of fan gathering stories that might be of interest to fans:
- The Wooly Mammoth Theater Company blog posted that fans “aren’t just connoisseurs of a given body of work. Whether dressing up for San Diego Comic-Con, reading fanfiction at the Archive of Our Own, or just proclaiming the awesomeness of a given movie, book, or TV show, fans’ allegedly geeky pursuits are all directed towards the same endpoint: community.” Fandom is a place where individual friendships develop over shared interests and “everyone has a voice on the Internet.”
- Larry Nemecek at Trekland Supplemental takes a bad experience as a way to relate to fandom of the past and what it’s lead to. “‘[S]uffering for your art’—or your passion!—was one of the very issues that had just cropped up this weekend in a reunion of our ‘80s-era Houston ‘first fandom’: namely, whether today’s digital-savvy, media-soaked fans appreciate what that first wave of relentless and oft-ridiculed Trekkies accomplished. Or, to be fair, whether they even can appreciate how much it took…so that not only was Kirk transplanted to the big screen, but with a groundswell that allowed offshoots like Picard, Sisko, Janeway, Archer and even ‘alt-Kirk’ to blossom. And, along the way, gave root to a movement that defined just what a modern ‘media franchise’ and its fandom could look like.”
- Robert Greenberger at ComicMix reviews Comic-Con and the Business of Pop Culture by Rob Salkowitz and muses over the evolution of comics fandom as “the rise of video games and infusion of Manga/Anime helped change popular culture and they began gravitating to San Diego to hawk their wares.” While finding the book misses the mark, Greenberger concludes that “the book’s most interesting chapters are its final ones as he explores where the market is in 2011-2012 and the trends that may push it in one of four directions: Ghost World (collapse of the direct market, Hollywood moves away from superheroes), Endless Summer (the status quo only more), Infinite Crisis (diehard, aging fans and no one else), and The Expanding Multiverse (new technologies and new ideas grow the business in fresh ways).”
- Tambay at Shadow and Act discusses increasing the connection between fans of black independent cinema and creators, and commenters cite the importance of community: “S&A’s comment section is reminiscent of a family reunion…Fights ensue and stratchline are etched in the sand, but that’s what lovers do. And they’re not limited to 140 characters. Essentially, S&A is unique in that it has a host of family members/commenters who bring a wealth of insight and information not normally seen on discussion boards. Granted, their pages are filled with tidbits of tantalizing information on Cinema Of The African Diaspora, however, I’ve come to believe many return to this place of enlightenment because they know there will be folks just like them, dropping by to see who’s in the comment section and what they are doing.”
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