(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

[nialla]

I've been wanting to go to a fandom con for a while now, but I'm leery of getting there and having it be the "old friends" situation. Seeing your friends is part of the fun of conventions (I have some friends I rarely see outside of con trips), but when you don't know any of them beyond maybe reading their work, it can feel rather awkward.

I'm wondering if the dismissal of LJ was simply because it's decentralized. A lot of folks in various fandoms migrated to DreamWidth and got rather snobby about it to those who are exclusively or primarily on LJ. That could be an issue, because to them, LJ is no longer the "cool" place to post.

I found it interesting that some of the people who ran a forum for one show came and went from LJ very quickly shortly after I joined up. I think it was simply because they couldn't enforce their rules here and they didn't like that idea. At all. They couldn't force conversations along the path they wanted and it was amusing to watch them retreat and claim LJ was a waste of time. ;)

I quickly figured out I didn't like the "One list to rule them all!" idea once I figured out LJ Land. One list can overwhelm me if it covers everything instead of just a pairing I'm interested in. I lose interest and skim trying to find what I want until I give up. I do like the "newsletter" style comms when I'm testing the waters in a new fandom to see what's out there, but bless the poor maintainers for keeping up with all that stuff. Some comms also do affiliate listings on their profile page, which helps in finding other comms of interest.

I'm really liking the AO3 model. People can post where they like, but then also post there as part of the ultimate central fandom archive with subdivisions for each fandom. Nice place to browse, though even there I can be overwhelmed with choice in one fandom, while watching tumbleweeds go by in another. I feel like I should pimp for it in some fandoms to increase the entries. ;)

[nikojen.livejournal.com]

They couldn't force conversations along the path they wanted and it was amusing to watch them retreat and claim LJ was a waste of time.
Heh, there was a lady who went on quite a while about how awful LJ is. She'd had a bad experience where she posted a response in someone's personal journal and the OP didn't respond (or responded with something bitchy... I forget the details) and she had decided from that that LJ wasn't worth her time. Half the panel was spent trying to convince her that one bad interaction does not make the entire LJ community worthless. :P

I quickly figured out I didn't like the "One list to rule them all!" idea once I figured out LJ Land.
I think a lot of it hinges on getting lucky with your fandoms and how well they self-organize. In my two main fandoms, the community of one is very good about announcing new fanworks in central locations, so you can subscribe to the main comms and get most of what's going on. But the other is very much *not*. That's where it gets frustrating... I know people are writing in the fandom occasionally, but they don't bother to announce it, so you just hope you stumble over it at some point.

But yeah, the AO3 model you describe is definitely the best of both worlds. :)