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Readdressing the Balance
So, after my post on how Media and Lit Natcons were joined, and how media fandom as a whole got thoroughly screwed, general consensus was that the whole situation sucked.
So what are we going to do about it?
Well, as it happens, there is a Natcon in Adelaide this weekend. With a business meeting. That would be a great place to start. I can't afford to go, but I know a fair chunk of you will be there. Do you want to set things in motion, and back each other up?
The fact that the original business meeting notes vanished may be down to accident, incompetence, or deliberate mishandling is neither here nor there. What matters is that it's well past time the situation was fixed. The deal was that in exchange for merging their Natcon with the Lit one, media fandom would get fair representation, in the awards and by extension, the programming. That's not happening.
There's no doubt that there will be resistance. But you know what, fuck it, a deal was made. And it was broken. There's no doubt that it will take years to rebuild things, to get that side of fandom even caring that there's a Natcon, let alone coming to it. And some would argue there's no point. But there is a point.
It could have gone the other way.
The Ditmars could have been lost, the Lit Natcon no more. They easily had the numbers to do this at a time when the Lit Natcon was not doing well, and they still gave up their awards, and their Natcon, with expectation of a fair deal they never received.
I didn't set out to try and get this thing fixed, I just wanted to make the point that we used to have more awards. But fuck it, now I'm angry. Because you know, I read and love books, but if I had to choose which box I fit in, I've always thought of myself as a media fan. Most of us watch films and TV shows, and love them. In our everyday lives, the Lit/Media divide doesn't exist, but our Natcon is skewed ridiculously heavily towards Lit.
Media fandom believed in community, and for over a decade that community has let them down.
And I think that's long enough.
So what are we going to do about it?Well, as it happens, there is a Natcon in Adelaide this weekend. With a business meeting. That would be a great place to start. I can't afford to go, but I know a fair chunk of you will be there. Do you want to set things in motion, and back each other up?
The fact that the original business meeting notes vanished may be down to accident, incompetence, or deliberate mishandling is neither here nor there. What matters is that it's well past time the situation was fixed. The deal was that in exchange for merging their Natcon with the Lit one, media fandom would get fair representation, in the awards and by extension, the programming. That's not happening.
There's no doubt that there will be resistance. But you know what, fuck it, a deal was made. And it was broken. There's no doubt that it will take years to rebuild things, to get that side of fandom even caring that there's a Natcon, let alone coming to it. And some would argue there's no point. But there is a point.
It could have gone the other way.
The Ditmars could have been lost, the Lit Natcon no more. They easily had the numbers to do this at a time when the Lit Natcon was not doing well, and they still gave up their awards, and their Natcon, with expectation of a fair deal they never received.
I didn't set out to try and get this thing fixed, I just wanted to make the point that we used to have more awards. But fuck it, now I'm angry. Because you know, I read and love books, but if I had to choose which box I fit in, I've always thought of myself as a media fan. Most of us watch films and TV shows, and love them. In our everyday lives, the Lit/Media divide doesn't exist, but our Natcon is skewed ridiculously heavily towards Lit.
Media fandom believed in community, and for over a decade that community has let them down.
And I think that's long enough.
no subject
All cons were better when we were young. And VB was a real beer back then,the music was real music, and the girls had sunshine flecked eyes and valued brains over bodies, back in the halcyon days of our youth.
Rose tinted glasses, dude.
WA has had the media/lit issues, but never to the degree of the east.
And, while I may not have been at those Melbourne media cons, the noise of bitching and moaning and wank and drama at that time, about those cons, was pretty audible even on this side of the Nullarbor - fixing those problems was one of the major reasons that SwanCon became the template for the way NatCons should be run.
Media fandom in the east is more marginalised now than at any time I can remember since 1979, which is when I joined fandom.
I haven't seen any concrete evidence that that this is the case - I would argue that (leaving the awards aside) many of those things that were then associated with media fandom have disappeared because the technology and the world has changed.
Video rooms being the most obvious example, but certainly more broadly than that.
If people are focussing on the awards, it's because there's been no articulation of anything outside of that.
There are more lit guests than media guests, yep - they're cheaper, and easier to get. Plenty of recent cons have tried to get media guests, but have failed on issues of scheduling and cost - SwanCon '07 was lucky to wind up with a guest of the quality of Rob Shearman, for example, after its initial pick fell through.
And programming is always at the direction of the committee, and is always subject to criticism of those people who didn't see their specific interests represented well enough (in their view) during the con.
Cont.