Ya gotta love Fandom. Well I know I do.
Posted By Kathleen David on December 12, 2006
This past weekend there was supposes to be a Firefly convention in Los Angeles. Due to circumstances that there have been no straight answers on, the organizers pulled the plug at the last minute. The California Browncoats showed up to be with who ever showed up. A number of the actors from the series showed up anyway after hearing what happened so the fans there got a chance to meet them. So the fans banded together and had fun anyway. Now there are a lot of people who still have questions about how they are going to get their refunds. I have a feeling that this one is going to reverberate through fandom and become part of the tales told in the future. Sort of like the bathtub of green Jell-O story or the peanut butter rule in costuming. My sympathies are with the fans and pros that were affected this weekend due to this convention’s çøçk-up.
Fandom does have its dark side. Occasionally there will be something that will happen in fandom that is just beyond belief. Every fandom seems to have these sorts of things happening on occasion. The Lord of the Rings groups recollects Tentmoot and the Bit of Earth fiasco. Harry Potter fan fiction has a whole series of villains or heroes depending on whom you read. Star Trek, being the granddaddy of media fandom, has many tales of people being screwed over through the years. There was the Doctor Who fandom kerfluffle in Chicago.
But there is also a bright side to the fandom. I have seen fans band together and help others in need. Most conventions I go to have some sort of charity that benefits from the convention one way or another. I remember one that was collecting old cell phones for a group that helps battered women. Food drives use to be a staple at conventions. Fandom has a big heart and wants to believe the best in people.
I am grateful to be a part of various fandoms.
> Star Trek, being the granddaddy of media fandom, has many tales of people being screwed over through the years.
You mean such as the horror stories from the mid-70s when unscrupulous fans massively overbooked TREK conventions in Chicago and NYC, then ran off with the loot?
Of course, it isn’t just them. There was the original SF EXPO (circa ’76?) which boasted a guest list of at least 50 big name authors and that was interesting because none of the ones we contacted had ever heard of it.
Just recently, a concom mismanaged things so badly at a Toronto anime convention that it became readily apparent on Saturday that they couldn’t hope to pay their bills and the hotel pulled the plug – to the intense irritation of the dealers and attendees.
But, yeah it’s gone the other way, too. Through no fault of its own, a major Toronto convention took a bath decades back. Whereupon another group of local fans organized a smaller-scale convention some months later to raise funds to help the previous one get out of debt. Pity it posted a loss, too, but at least their hearts were in the right place, if not their financial acument.
And don’t forget the Bg Bang convention, aka the Big Bust convention in Chicago back in 1995… that thing was so poorly run and mismanaged that one of the dealers actually went to Kinko’s and had buttons and stickers made that said “I survived the Big Bust Convention” and they sold so well, I’m told they had to get them printed up three more times…
We had fun at the thing, regardless of how asinine the con promoter was (I’m almost dead certain he’s the source of the bootlegs of two of the early B5 videos I did for JMS – they were shown at the con, and that was the only instance I’ve ever had a tape/DVD for those out of my control) or how poor the event was compared to what was advertised… made some great friends that weekend that I still call friends and see at cons…
On the good flipside, though, I also remember the weekend that JJ Johnson died back in 1990, there was a DixieTrek or something that weekend that started a massive charity drive for his family at the convention events as soon as the word got out…
Peanut butter?
Green Jello in the bathtub?
I am unaware of those stories-can anyone enlighten me?
Thanks
Dave