(no subject)

[niko]

Well, I think MediaWest is a bit of a bust for me.

I ran into similar problems as what I ran into last year - just not a lot of intersect between my particular niches of fandom and the rest of the attendees in most of the panels I attended, and not having any idea how to go about trying to connect with anyone outside of panels.  (Example of the former: the one anime panel - one of the reasons I've switched from going to anime cons to media cons was that I feel like the folks here are a bit more of my peers.  Anime cons are dominated by teenagers and men, not adult women.  So this panel caught my eye for a chance to talk anime with my peers for a change.  The other people who attended the panel?  Two adult men, and a teenage girl.  All my grand dreams of discussing anime from an adult woman's perspective, yaoi vs. slash, anime through the lens of media fandom, etc. went *right* down the drain. :P

I was also made of *fail* in trying to participate in Mag7 panels.  If I had more chutzpah, I'd show up at the Mag7 party they're having tonight, but with how everyone else in the panels seemed to be on a first-name basis and clearly had known each other for years and years, I just can't picture showing up (solo) as the only stranger in a room full of old friends.  I don't have the cajones for it right now.  It was cool to put faces to names of people whose work I've read on blackraptor, though. :)

On a more meta-y, less whiny note: One thing I found interesting/frustrating is how dismissive some folks seemed to be of the fandom presence on LiveJournal.  I can't say I've ever been thrilled with how decentralized and loosey-goosey LJ allows fandom to be, and I always look back at the heyday of The Sentinel as an ideal fannish situation - *ONE* primary discussion list, *ONE* primary fic-posting list, and *everything* posted to the fic list automatically gets grabbed for a single comprehensive archive (on the gen side, anyway... I think TS's slash fandom had a similar situation with 852 Prospect).  And yes, I've certainly thought about nagging LJ-writers to put their stuff up on Blackraptor, because the 'single comprehensive archive' thing, in particular, is pretty attractive to me.

But I feel like to ignore LJ at this point is just cutting off your nose to spite your face.  Especially knowing how abso-freaking-lutely *AMAZING* the Mag7 community here is, I can't imagine missing out just because I have qualms about the format or whatever.  There were a couple times where something on LJ was mentioned, and there were at least a few people in each panel where you could practically hear their eye-rolls.  *eye-roll*  ;)

Comments

[dj-aida.livejournal.com]

I'm also involved with fandom through LJ mostly, though I do have my own (rarely updated, sorry to say) website. I tried Yahoo groups, but it's very difficult reading posts there, especially for someone like me who's on digest because I don't have a lot of time to devote to cleaning up all the extraneous info. LJ's friends page is perfect for me.

...one of the reasons (aside from idleness of course) that I haven't submitted my stuff to Blackraptor is because of their guideline "do not submit stories that are already available at another website."
I forgot about that part, and yes, I'm sorry that guideline exists. What happens if that story then gets pulled down, or a website goes bust (as was the case with Geocities )? Not everyone stays active in a fandom years after they've submitted a fic, so there's no way to contact them to ask about archiving it.

How does one centralize a fandom? What is the incentive for fans to start posting all their creations because there's more to fandom than just fics - in one place? In Mag7, there's Clarion News, whose purpose is to serve as a news central - how does one convince people to start using it more when, like nikojen say, there are those who scoff at LiveJournal?

[solosundance.livejournal.com]

Right now fanartists and vidders have very limited options for their work ... which is a real shame. One of the nicest things about livejournal is that it's a place for all kinds of creations. I wish the scoffers wouldn't scoff :(