Sigh. . .

[kiya]

This will be a rant. I suspect that people who consider themselves part of "fandom" should probably read it only under advisement that I'm fed up with fandom and shouting mad.

I should know better by now. I should know better than to ever admit that I find fandom frequently a strange, alienating culture full of shit that I don't want to take.

So someone posted a, "I don't understand why anyone on rasseff would be going to DragonCon rather than WorldCon," with undertones of "because, after all, WorldCon is where all the Real Fans go". And I made the stupid mistake of saying, essentially, "The attitude about where the Real Fans go is one of the reasons I don't want to be a fan, or pass for a fan, or what have you."

Got the usual response: That's just one person with one shibboleth, you're overreacting, the whole community isn't like that.

Isn't it?

The word "sci-fi" is in my dialect as a generic, catch-all term for fantasy, science fiction, horror, surrealistic weirdness like Photographing Fairies, all of that stuff. I write sci-fi. The thing I'm near seventy kilowords in on is sci-fi; it's a fantasy set in a nocturnal-functioning world with a couple of different humanoid races, yadda, yadda, yadda. That's what the word means in the culture I grew up with, and so it makes perfect sense to me that The Sci-Fi Channel shows what it shows, which is exactly that.

The first I heard about the objection to the term? A few months after the Sci-Fi Channel was established, I heard rumours that there were some people who were protesting it because they found it derogatory. I came to the conclusion that there are crazy people who'll take offense at the damnedest things, and ignored it. Until I encountered fandom, and discovered that in order to deal politely with people, I had to let them take my words away.

And I've yet to find another word that means "fantasy, science fiction, horror, surrealistic weirdness like Photographing Fairies, all of that stuff" that's comfortable and easy to say. And I've got a fucking complex as fandom perpetuates its memes by abusing the people who don't conform until they're spastic, twitching masses.

Congratulations. One, count me one, spastic, twitching mass.


Now then, the whole "DragonCon isn't real, WorldCon is" thing looks a lot to me like it's the usual "books are real, television and movies aren't really" bigotry under a thin veneer. Fuck that. My childhood is as much full of what's called "media sf" as it was full of books; of afternoons driving to Baltimore listening to WETA broadcasting the radio series of The Hitchhiker's Guide To The Galaxy, sitting in the living room with a bowl of oversalted popcorn and a Dr. Pepper watching Dr. Who with my father and chanting "cheap special effects!" at the rubber monsters, going to West Virginia with my aunt, who had copied all of the original Star Wars movies onto audio tapes and played them in the car are all as much a part of my upbringing as climbing the bookcases to get at the rest of the Cherryh, of having The Lord of the Rings read to me at bedtime, one book at a time, in between Dr. Doolittle (when we needed a break), of my father's periodic sweeping my room for his books that had somehow migrated inwards.

It's all the real stuff, damnit.


A few weeks after I tried to call people on rasseff on this bigotry against "media" stuff, I went downtown; there was going to be an alt.poly get-together because a bunch of people were in town for Arisia. People got to talking, and someone (once she identified me) said, "You know, I was reading that argument you were in, and I've had the same argument about costuming . . . ."

I responded today to someone who mentioned that not liking the categorization of things into legitimate fanac and not-fanac, and who cited CostumeCon as an example. I think that's what it was called; it was a costumer thing, anyway.

And I remember seeing suggestions that the Masquerade be dropped from various conventions that have such a thing, because it's not real fandom. Or indeed the suggestion that the Masquerade at WorldCon could reasonably be held in the same timeslot as the Hugo Awards Ceremony, if there were space for two such large gatherings, because it was reasonable to presume there was no overlap between the costumers and the Real Fen.

I've seen similar stuff about gaming rooms on occasion, though not as virulent as the stuff about costuming.


I can take this pretty easily from the "mainstream". I can't take it from a subgroup that claims to be welcoming of anyone "fannish".

Me, I don't want to go to a WorldCon. A "family reunion" for a family that isn't mine and that doesn't like my kind isn't my idea of fun. DragonCon, hey, I go to DragonCon I get to hang out with erispope. Who is family.

Comments

[kalmn.livejournal.com]

if you went to a worldcon i was at (which is a small subset, admittedly) i would hang out with you. because i think that you are my kind of people and i like you.

i've had this same argument with people. it's frustrating. i am not currently at the ranting and banging my head stage, but i was there a week and a half ago.

i think that you get to be a fan if you want to be, and don't have to if you don't want to be. my opinion and my opinion only.

[kiya]

I like you too. :) So that's something, at least.

I get so . . . frustrated . . . by shit like this. I mean, I like a lot of people in fandom, and there's a lot of interesting conversations there, but it's got no more claim on the "more enlightened" crap than polyamory does. It's full of shibboleths, and treacherous for the outsider, just like any group of human beings with an identification burr.

I've had people tell me that I'm obviously a fan because I posted to rasseff, because That's Fanac, and anyone who said they weren't a fan on rasseff was Lying Or Deluded. If it looks like a duck, y'know? No, I posted to rasseff because I found it interesting there. I don't have any self-identification with fandom, and any time I might find myself comfortable forming one, I get hit in the nose with a shibboleth.

I may go back to rasseff at some point. Right now, I just want to cry.

I'm really not doing so hot at this dealing with humans thing these days.

[kalmn.livejournal.com]

humans are no fun and i don't like them much. snakes are way better. i would loan you my puppy for snuggling (as long as you promised not to let the snake eat her) were you not so far away.

[elynne.livejournal.com]

I am completely unfamiliar with this "fannish" nonsense... but I'm very familiar with it under a different, and possibly more bizarre guise: Furry Fandom. Eeeeyugh.

People Are People, and sometimes People Are Jackasses. :P I need caffeine.

[silmarian.livejournal.com]

You'd probably like CONvergence.

We don't do that stupid real-fan vs. media-fan thing. We were founded because of that stupidity causing Minicon to implode. (Minicon, aka 'That 400-person literary convention' became so because of Stupid Politics(tm) that involved, in no small part, the demonization of 'media fans'.) We're doing our damndest to be equally welcoming to media and lit fans...and to those of us who are All Of The Above.

Anyhow. Arguments like that are a big part of why I love the group I'm with now. We revel in our geekery, call it sci-fi (and not (ugh) 'skiffy'), and generally have fun. And most of us have a very low BS tolerance.

[kiya]

Maybe sometime I'll come out to visit you and have a go at that.

The fucking irony of it all is that I'm primarily a lit-fan if I'm any sort of fan anyway, but because I don't want to chunk babies with that bathwater I get things like, "If you had your way we'd not have any place to talk about books." (I'm not kidding on this, though this wasn't the recent argument.)

I hear people complaining about "the greying of fandom" and come all over sardonic.

[silmarian.livejournal.com]

Heh. We have a pretty young demographic... and, really (see the response I'm working on to Kal's response), we -need- more litfolks! I'm pretty damn incompetant when it comes to lit outside of what I like to read (primarily milsf and alternate history).

However, we have such a radically polarized community that we will never, ever be seen as a 'real' convention by many people, owing to our lack of 'lit' people.

(Nevermind that we had a pair of *wonderful* GOHs who are writers (Diane Duane and Peter Morwood) and that most of our comp list was published authors. We're not 'literary'.)

Fah. People will always see what they want to see, especially in this town.

[kalmn.livejournal.com]

We don't do that stupid real-fan vs. media-fan thing.

ummmmm... yes you do.

you just do it in reverse.

i don't find reverse snobbery to be much more fun than the original kind.

[silmarian.livejournal.com]

I've got a detailed response in my journal that I'm working on - I don't want to hijack Lilairen's. But to sum up:

1) Calling anything 'real' in relation to anything else is gonna make whoever is in that 'other' group grumpy.
2) Wanna help make CONvergence more lit-friendly? Then help, dammit!
3) Live and let live. Kal, you, personally, aren't guilty of being one of the 'real fans' who bashes those of us who choose not to be/are not part of that culture/failed Fhan101. But I've met more than a few people who need 'live and let live' burned into the skin of their brain (on both sides). I just put away the branding iron recently after reapplying it to myself.

Gah!

[kalmn.livejournal.com]

i'm not certain who you're arguing with, but it's not me.

what makes me furious and sad and unwilling to listen to it, from either side, is all of the vitriol. which pretty much everyone around here is guilty of. (here being mpls fandom and conventions at least, and possibly a wider area than that, not lilairen's lj.)

branding, huh? and i thought i was a big kinky weirdo with the tattoos and the piercings. ;)

[kiya]

But without the ferrets.

(Or wait a second. Was that thought 'ferrets are kinky' or 'ferrets are animated slinkies'?)

Mmmph. I need to go back to thinking at tattoos. Though Kevin was vaguely amused that the cats seem to be providing him with ritual scarification. (Arthur-the-mighty-fluffbrain did his bicep today.)

[kalmn.livejournal.com]

there was a car dealership in moscow that had tile work that i want to be adapted for my next tattoo. pretty pretty.

(it'd be an easier story to explain than the back story behind my current tattoo, which i usually just refuse to tell. explanation available in email, if anyone reading this is curious...)

[avram]

We revel in our geekery, call it sci-fi (and not (ugh) 'skiffy'), and generally have fun.

Which sounds just like every sf con I've ever been to, except with "sci-fi" and "skiffy" switched. Really, what's so superior about saying "ugh" to "skiffy" instead of "sci-fi"? (Or "sf" or "stf"?") (Pronounced "ess-eff" and "stef" respectively.)

[kiya]

My experience of "skiffy" is that it denotes "made up word to display contempt for people like me who grew up calling the stuff 'sci-fi'."

[silmarian.livejournal.com]

Exactly.

Same thing with a lot of the 'little' things in fannish culture. Like random h's. I'm sorrhy, bhut rhandom h's just dhon't dho it for me. *grin*

I will admit - there are things that if you don't know I'll be surprised, and possibly disappointed, about. But I don't generally view myself as inherently superior because I -do- know them. I'll quite happily take the time to explain obscure references.

[avram]

Don't do what for you? I'm serious here. What is it that you think they're supposed to do?

[avram]

Ah. Whereas my experience of "sci-fi" is that it was a term coined by Forry Ackerman and adopted by the entertainment industry to denigrate every relating to science fiction. My experience of "skiffy" is that it's a joking pronunciation of "sci-fi", intended to indicate the the speaker is taking the matter lightly.

[silmarian.livejournal.com]

*shrug* It's a reaction to having a lot of 'skiffy' shoved down my throat as being inherently superior to saying 'sci-fi'.

I lump it in the same category as a lot of 'fannish culture' - it gives me hives.

We all have our prejudices.

[aiglet.livejournal.com]

I think maybe we need to start a new club... I don't know if you saw this (http://www.livejournal.com/talkread.bml?journal=aiglet&itemid=36341) when this came up the last time in RASFF, but trust me, it's not just you -- it's everyone born after 1930. :p

[kiya]

Heh -- no, I wasn't reading LJ back then. But yup, that looks so familiar.

It sometimes feels to me like I've spent my whole life existing comfortably as non-antagonistic dualisms, but whenever I try to find a place where I can celebrate a part of those dualisms, the other people there want to take up arms against my other half.

[boojum.livejournal.com]

I've seen this happen with a lot of mailing lists. I think as soon as a section of humanity has a name, everything goes all weird, polarizes into Us and Them (with different definitions of Us and Them for everyone), and explodes. I can't think of a solution which doesn't come down to pointing and grunting.

If you're unable to communicate your definition of sci-fi to people, see if they've heard of fantastic literature. Near as I can tell, that term covers everything which isn't likely to be happening right now or to have happened in the past, which seems a lot like what you're trying to express, plus or minus a few subgenres. There are certainly a zillion definition-wankers, but there are probably a number of people using the definition of sci-fi I grew up with (roughly: anything involving robots, machinery, aliens, the far future, other planets, or really cool tech) who are just having trouble understanding you.

[kiya]

Haven't had that problem; have had the problem of people getting on my ass for Daring To Speak The Dreaded Word.

*sigh*

[avram]

I'm going to agree and disagree both here.

Agree: Yeah, there is some bigotry of the kind you describe going around. Mostly it's because the thing that used to be called science-fiction fandom for most of the 20th century was a tight-knit literary pehnomenon, spread largely through the mechanism of fanzines. These people -- I'll call them fanzine fans -- were it. They were the ones who started throwing sf conventions in the first place. Way back then, there was no real distinction between fanzine fans and filk fans and constuming fans, and there were barely any sf movies or TV shows worth watching (which didn't stop conventions from having film programs), and RPGs hadn't quite been invented yet (though some fans had something that looked a whole lot like gaming-by-fanzine well before Gygax and Arneson published D&D, it didn't take off).

Then came Star Trek, and a big flood of new people entered fandom. Then came Star Wars, and SF became part of the general culture. Nowadays "fandom" means something other than what it used to, and it's gotten big enough that there are subsets full of people who have no connection with original core fandom -- filkers who do almost nothing but filk, gamers who never leave the gaming rooms, etc. -- and since the gamer who never leaves the gaming room is more readily identifiable as a gamer than the one who also does some filking, and hangs out in the fanzine lounge, and talks about the latest Vernor Vinge book with you in the con suite, it's the isolated ones who get taken up as the stereotypes of their respective sub-fandoms.

Anyway, there's resentment. The fanzine fans -- the original core fans -- find themselves just one more sub-fandom, and in some cases not even the core subgroup. They've had their word taken away from them, and they resent it. Some of them get grumpy in public.

Disagree: But here's the thing -- to the extent that what I wrote above is true -- to the extent that fanzine fandom is becoming a sub-fandom rather than the core fandom -- the bigotry I describe is practiced by a minority rather than the majority.

[kalmn.livejournal.com]

the bigotry I describe is practiced by a minority rather than the majority.

that's what i've found, too.

(not that it makes it not irritating, y'know, but it's still good to know.)

[pir-anha.livejournal.com]

Until I encountered fandom, and discovered that in order to deal politely with people, I had to let them take my words away.

hm. you've had a rant similar to this before on alt.poly and i guess i get it and i don't really get it at the same time. people have "taken away" lots of words from me, and yeah, it does annoy me, but i don't necessarily disassociate from them because, well, taking words and transmogrifying them is what happens in a living language, and i am probably guilty of it myself. and i adjust in so many small ways to the company in which i find myself, language-wise, that one word really doesn't make a difference to me.

i've "lost" some important words, too, and some words get so abused that i froth at the mouth sometimes ("politically correct" used to be such a wonderful phrase!) but i just write it off post-frothing as "shit happens". except when the change of the word means that i really can no longer associate with a movement or community because the change of the word indicates a shift of the politics.

and i can understand where fandom comes from -- the original sphere of fen basically has been embattled for a long time now, and if anyone has truly lost something, it's them. and no, i'm not part of fandom, but in general i find i can talk about stuff that interests me more easily with those who say "ess-eff" than those who say "sci-fi".. clearly that's not true with you, and it's but a personal observation; not like one word is ever enough to judge a person by.

ok, maybe "lifestyle" is that one word, *evil snicker*.

-piranha

[kiya]

It's sort of the feeling that the word is the symbol; I hear: "Give up the word, give up the stuff that matters to you, don't get enthused by the people in the pretty outfits, don't waste your time with the gaming, you're not really One Of Us unless you've read this list of books, and even if you've read them it doesn't count unless you liked them, don't object when someone sneers at something you find relevant for yourself, and, by the way, we're a Welcoming Community For People Like You."

Sort of like the cringes I get about the word "lifestyle" come in significant part from the feeling that the word has baggage, carried by goddess-worshipping highly evolved bonobos. Being told to scrap the word has baggage.

[sinboy.livejournal.com]

Wow. It sucks that you're feeling spastic-twitchy-masslike. Feeling like there's an exclusionary movement going on in a childhood playground would drive me nuts. < hugs > if you want them.

[kiya]

Mmmmmm. Hugs good.

Thankee.

First off, big hug.

[browngirl.livejournal.com]

Ow.

I wrote a couple paragraphs of analysis here, but, you know, you don't need analysis. I just wish I knew what to say to help you feel better. You're right here, as you were recently in a discussion in my journal, about this particular variant of People Being Stupid. I hope you can keep accessing the subjects you enjoy with as little annoyance by People Being Stupid as possible.

*hug*

A.