wickedwords

Everyone in fandom has a fan name. It is the name that most people in fandom use for a particular person’s body of fannish work, be it art, fiction, vids, archives, opinion, twitter feed, or LJ. It can be anything: it may be derived from a favorite fandom, the title of a book, or the closest object when creating a new account. Whatever it is, that fan name is important; it is how we know and identify each other in fandom. The fan name is casually used, and has the individual’s history behind it. Even when someone chooses to use a new fan name, somewhere along the way a translation is made, so that the old history gets associated with the new name.

Occasionally, a fan will choose to use their legal name as their fan name. Conventional wisdom says not to do it, but the use of legal names as fan names is something that goes in and out of fannish fashion. In the early 90s, there was a big push to use legal names as there is nothing inherently nasty or wrong about participating in fandom, but as the community moved on line, the concerns about negative exposure meant that more people chose to use fan names disassociated with their legal (or ‘real life’) names.

So while it does feel weird and awkward, if a fan has chosen to use their real life name as a fan name, it is not an outing situation when another fan uses it as well. The individual using their RL name as a fan name may choose to rethink that choice and migrate to a new fan name, but that’s no different than any fan who decides that their old fan name no longer cuts it. It’s tough, but eventually--usually-- the change is accepted. People with wank-filled histories may find it harder to change their fan names, or a translation matrix may always follow behind them.

Like many other people, I've had a story archived without my permission on tehopheliac's site: http://www.amortentia.net/

ETA: The site has been taken down now, so it's being dealt with.

( my emo reaction )

This came up at Escapade, so here's a link to the potlatch essay I wrote in 1999. It's been nearly ten years since I wrote it, so it needs updating, but I think the concepts still hold.

The Fannish Potlatch

Lately, I've been thinking about origin stories, the stories that people tell about how their world came into being, and about the way fans talk about their origins. To my way of thought, most people start in fandom within a single community founded on a very focused interest, whether that interest be a TV show, a book, a movie, or a whole genre of stuff. This silo-style community has existed forever, wherever people have gathered together and bonded over their love of something, building friendships out of their passions for minutia and detail over something that the rest of the world just doesn't understand. So Sherlock Holmes fandom was a silo in the 1800s, as was 'Little Nell' fandom. There was probably a Hercules silo back in ancient times, when all the Herc fans would hang together and talk about their favorite stories, and who told the best rendition of the 12 labors.

In fact, I bet of these silos were incubators, what I call threshold fandoms, that brought a lot of new people into that one fannish community. They learned what fandom was within the confines of their silo, their community of origin. Back in the day when we had gatekeepers to fandom, the gatekeeper would teach you how to interact with other fans, and define appropriate behavior. The gatekeeper created a mask, a template, for what was expected in being a member of the community, and that, in turn, became the expectation about what would happen in any fannish community.

Media fandom began as one of these silos. In begat, begat, begat terms, Science Fiction fandom begat Star Trek Fandom which, in turn, begat Media Fandom. Before the late 1970s, there was no such thing as a media fan; everyone was a fan of their specific fandom, whether that was Star Trek, The Man from Uncle, Led Zeppelin, James Bond, or The Lord of the Rings. The origin fandom was all: father, mother, sister, brother. It defined who we were, and who we interacted with, the geeks, the wonks, and the nerds. We were all soul mates (if you include bitter enemies in the definition of soul mates), and we'd always be together.

In 1975, though, the world changed. Because 1975 brought Starsky and Hutch to the table, and from that point on, things could never be the same.

I can't really describe the acrimony that existed as old Star Trek and K/S fans fell under the spell of Starsky and Hutch. It was so bad, the first Starsky and Hutch zine planned to publish completely anonymously, no names attached, because of fear of reprisal. Women who were made of strong stuff vowed that they could and would put their fan names on their fiction, no matter what friendships it cost. It was a bloody civil war.

By 1977, a sort of accommodation was made, with fans agreeing that both silos could exists, and turning cold shoulders on the defectors to the other camp. But 1977 brought "The Professionals" and "Star Wars", and suddenly, there were a heck of a lot of silos around. Fans needed a way to talk about people interested in more than one community, and so they came up with a term: Media Fan. People looking around at all the sources of fandom, and realizing that "hey, wait a minute, I did this same sort of writing thing back when I was a Led Zepplin fan", and out came the drawer fic that people hadn't admitted to having, back before the great schism. It became the umbrella term for everything, no matter what the source, as long as the community and the social network remained the same.

And in 1978, that media fandom community begat the first Media West con, albeit under a different name.

So to my way of thinking, this is the point at which Media Fandom really begins. There are silos and communities before it, of course, as we didn't fall out of the ether completely formed, but the creation of the term Media Fandom was a symbol of accommodation, embracing the diversity of those who were Media fans.

This story is not completely true, and it relies on history and experiences that aren't universal, and have been talked about and retold so many times that it's hard to see the truth. But I like the ideas in it, that we created the term media fandom out of a desire to preserve friendships and find a middle ground, where we could all exist.

YMMV, of course, as we all have our own origin story. But I think this one is mine.

Stargate Atlantis, how much do I love thee? ( Not as much as a tall mountain, but more than a babbling brook )

I had the wonderful opportunity to remix one of the stories by thepouncer

Title: See the Possible (Taste the Rainbow remix) (at remix community)
Summary: Friendship in Five Senses
Rating: PG
Characters: John, Rodney
Fandom: SGA

A/N: Many thanks to elynross for her beta; all the remaining errors are my own. Written for the 2007 remix_redux challenge. Original story: See the Possible by thepouncer


(  See the Possible (Taste the Rainbow) )

( fuzzy-headed rambling )

A while back, queenzulu asked for some meta on "Fandoms I Have Known." It became more of a history of me and my participation in Fandom, rather than talking a lot about the fandoms themselves. So, for 14valentines, I finished putting the finishing touches on it while elynross read through it so I wouldn't subject y'all to my random capitalization and spelling.

( My Life as a Fan )

The 14 Valentines Issue of the Day: Women and Voting

I know that there are some tiny SGA spoilers in this one, so I'm putting in a cut tag. It's a wrap up of the panels on Saturday.

( Saturday Panels )

I have never been as prolific a writer as I was this year. When I look at my goals from last year -- 6 completed stories, 1 of them over 6000 words -- I had no idea I was being so easy on myself. That felt like a pretty good year. I made a resolution to join a challenge, finish off a WIP, and work on joining into fandom a bit more, instead of sitting by the sidelines.

Then SGA ate my brain. At the time I was working on this meme last year, I though maybe I'd glom onto House fandom, but, uh, yeah. The end result is that I wrote 50+ stories, chapters, and drabbles, including last year's yuletide but excluding this year's yuletide and sga_santa. That is a lot for me. Seriously. When did I become prolific?

( Story Details )
( Vid Details )
( Now the meme )
( resolutions )

So, for several years now I've been using this metaphor to describe viding in the late eighties and nineties, that of the 'greater' and 'lesser' houses of viding, and toward the end of the timeperiod, the houses being 'beseiged' by either 'barbarians at the gate' or 'feral vidders'. Obviously, I have read far too much political-based Fantasy and SF in my life, but the metaphor felt like it fit to me.

Well, this year I got to do a whole presentation on my theory and how it all worked; unfortunately, it was scheduled against "Scooby Road." I got really good attendance, but man, I didn't get to see Lum's masterpiece, and so was incredibly bummed about that. But as there is never a good time to for anything to be scheduled.

Because I am lazy, all you get is the notes from the panel, but I hope you can see where we were going. There really wasn't time for enough discussion, and I only made it up to the creation of the west coast asthetic via vidding interaction at Escapade, so some year, there will need to be a part two.

Please note: All the asthetics have their strengths. I am coming out of the west coast asthetic, so my preferences are based on that, but everyone has their own preferences. I also need to mention that there's a difference between specifics and generalizations: while each person chooses for themselves what they will do, once you generalize, the individual choices get washed out. Each person within an asthetic chooses to follow some, all, or none of the values that they have been exposed to, yet the trend among all the vidders in that asthetic still holds.

( genealogy notes )

One final note: even though I set the timeframe for this as the late 80s through the 90s, the asthetics and vidding guidelines they imply are still going strong. In this year's VVC premiere's show, I'd say 'Joker' was a great example of the mediawest asthetic, showcasing accessiblity to a crowd; Morgan Dawn's Dr. Who vid was an excellent example of the use of color in a vid, something prized by the San Fransicso asthetic; and Crush Story (our 'The Tick' vid) was out-and-out pure West Coast asthetic.