Wise words

[dalekboy]

"...they don’t think they need saving. I mean, they haven’t changed for years, have they? They’re not designed to be wanted because they don’t want to be wanted, not really. They want to be left alone to do their thing, and they don’t want any loud new people in the room. They serve a dwindling audience, and they have to be aware of that — so they have to be in it to simply serve that audience, to provide that presumably cosy experience to their people until the last light goes out. Otherwise they would have done something different years ago."

That's Warren Ellis talking about sf magazines, but he could be talking about the majority of sf fan clubs and conventions in Australia.

Just because your friends turn up, doesn't mean it's good.
Just because it breaks even, doesn't mean it's a success.
Just because something runs, that doesn't mean it's still relevant.

More on this later...

Comments

[strangedave.livejournal.com]

Its even more true of most fan clubs than it is of the magazines.

[dalekboy.livejournal.com]

Sharon and I were a member of a club years ago that had the most dreadful newsletter imaginable. It was full of in-jokes on virtually every page. Given how huge the club was at the time, and that most of their membership was interstate, it was unforgivable.

And while it's an extreme example, that's what you get with a lot of fan-run things - something geared to their friends. Now that's only natural, but people are unwilling to make the extra effort to welcome the newbies, and are quick to criticise them when they don't honour the history.

[vegetus.livejournal.com]

If I recall a previous discussion correctly, I was also a member of that club with the terrible newsletter, a young interstate member. I didn't actually notice the injokes you and Sharon have mentioned, but that could have been because I was like 15 at the time, on the other side of the country and it was somewhere were I could read fanfic and get spoilers *before* the internet was widely available.

[dalekboy.livejournal.com]

I'm not worried about naming the particular group, The X-Files Club, given they don't actually exist any more. But I've seen lots of clubs go down the same path.

At one point Lameo wanted a 'centrefold' of me in a club newsletter, and I exploded at him. It doesn't matter if I'm well-liked by Melbourne fans, what are the overseas readers going to think? It's not relevant to them at all, and there was no conceivable reason to do it.

That was the conversation where I burst the blood vessel in my eye.

I don't mind the odd in-joke, the occasional highly local thing, but in theory the clubs and conventions belong to the members, they aren't your personal play-thing.

Before the internet? You old bitch!

[vegetus.livejournal.com]

Yes, but we know Lameo doesn't have the best or most thought out ideas.

And yes *before* the internet. So old!

Funnily enough though I can't be bothered with fanfic anymore now that it doesn't arrive to my house 4 times a year...

[angriest.livejournal.com]

Well when fanfic was published in print fanzines there was usually some kind of vague quality control. Trying to read fanfic today is like facing onto 1,000,000 boom boxes all turned up to 11 and trying to hear the one song you're looking for.

[vegetus.livejournal.com]

I think like many things on the internet, there is heaps out there and it takes effort and time to sort through the junk until you find what you want. And personally, I must say I'm really slack.