I need to share this heartbreaking, wonderful and insightful post about friendship and fandom at Firefox News:
This is fandom. Aside from the squeeing, aside from the flamewars, ‘shipwars, and FK wars (don’t ask), it’s about forming a community. It’s about making friends with people you’d otherwise never even meet, and becoming as close to them as your family. Closer, in some cases.
[…]
Being fannish is one thing. We’re good at that. We’ve been obsessing about our shows and movies and books for years, most of us long before we ever met a kindred soul who said those magic words, “OMG, you like that too?” But it’s that second moment which lasts. It’s the relationships we build from the most tenuous stuff, and how we keep building them, and shore up the old ones with jokes and stories and shared experiences and comfort even from far away. These are the things that matter, whether they’re held in common with your best friend from high school, or with this wonderful fan who lives two thousand miles away but shares in every way your deep and abiding belief that Captain Picard and Dr. Crusher should be shagging like weasels. (Please choose your own favorite couple to be shagging like weasels.)
[…]
Fandom’s about not being alone anymore. Maybe you started as a fan-inna-box, two hundred miles from the nearest con and farther still to the nearest fan, but you came here to find friends, and to share your squee, and to create things together, and to say, “I was here, and I loved this thing, and these are the people who will remember me.” Maybe they’ll remember you for that fanfic where you had all the characters doing a kickline, and maybe they’ll remember that filk you did to “The Wreck of the Edmund Fitzgerald,” and maybe they’ll recall with a smile the weird in-depth meta you did on the time-travel episode, and maybe they’ll remember the vid you did of the dancing penguins, but mostly, the good friends will remember the other things you did and talked about, your pets and your family and that trip you dreamed of and that crazy prank you pulled on your boss and that time you dyed your hair blue. Even if you never met in the real world, the way the mundanes would say you define a friend, they’ll remember.
This dovetails with some of the reasons I love conventions:
Those of us who will cram thirteen of our friends into a hotel room for a weekend to geek out together have a place to go where not only will we not be laughed at for dressing up but encouraged to do it (except the furries; those weirdos are on their own.) We can invade a hotel for a weekend, pretend it’s like the cereal convention in Sandman, and recover enough hit points to survive our real lives until the next one.
I’ve already got a couple of cons on the schedule for 2009: Phoenix Comicon and Penguicon. I’m sure more will be added, and even though I don’t know what they are, I can tell you with complete honesty that I’m already looking forward to them all.
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It looks like WW had one or more unfortunate incidents with some yiffin’ ferverts. The few furries I know aren’t like that at all.
With regards to the furry thing: http://xkcd.com/471/
Ahh! Fandom. One of my favorite subjects. I love fandom of all sorts, from the inside jokes to the secret history and language. I love how every fandom has its very own scale of involvement..and how every fan, no matter how extreme, believes that they are normal, and that anyone who is significantly more committed is a “freak.” I blended back into the “mundane” world when I married, and am only now happily returning to the fold. (and bringing my family along for the ride.) I look forward to seeing you at the various Cons in the year ahead. Also, any thought of a meetup/lecture/reading outside of the upcoming Convention Tour of Coolness™, such as during the ComicCon 2009? Obviously, your time is precious, but I’m sure you can come up with a way to make it worth your while.
Humping anyone isn’t a salute, it’s an shootable offence. I recommend the 30-aught-6.
No, fursuiters should do a military salute infront of Wil instead; this is why I encourage an escort by the Dorsai Irregulars.
I wonder if there are furries dressed like weasels, shagging like weasels?
Wow, this is SO true. Great article. I met 6 of my closest friends through various fandoms. Went to a couple conventions too. Wouldn’t change a darn thing!
I was sorry to read in Just A Geek that you had problems with Creation. I hope things are good now and you’ll consider doing a con with them next year in Los Angeles. I’d love to meet you and have you sign your books. By the way, I went in search of The Happiest Days of Our Lives and could only find one that was selling for $200! Frick!
@ayzsky: I’ll probably be at one show or another in Los Angeles next year, because that’s where I live, but it won’t be a Creation convention.
I tried really hard to work things out with Creation, but they put me on some kind of blacklist for “bad talking” about them (which was essentially me saying, “I wish they’d done X instead of Y, and maybe spelled my name correctly” at some show), and I won’t be invited to attend any future Creation conventions. It was so inexplicably petty of them, I don’t even know what to say. However, it’s their business, and they can run it however they’d like.
Luckily, I don’t rely on Creation conventions for income like a lot of other actors, and to be honest, based on the way they’ve treated me in the last few years (and fandom forever), they’re not the kind of people I’m interested in doing business with, anyway. Life’s too short, and there are plenty of other promoters and other shows where fans and actors alike are treated with professionalism and respect. Those are the shows I’ll be attending from now on.
Wil: I don’t know if you’ve ever been to a furry convention, or if you’ve only seen people dressed in fursuits at other events, but from what you said I’m guessing the latter.
You say you’ve had a bad time with overly-friendly fursuiters in the past; I believe you, because there are people like that. Not many, but they exist.
The issue is generalizing that experience to “furries”, a term which has a far wider scope, encompassing artists, writers, costumers, roleplayers, and plain ol’ fans. It’s stereotyping – like saying “Star Trek fans are pervs” because a guy wearing Spock ears made an inappropriate suggestion at a party. It would be inaccurate even if you restricted your comments to fursuiters (despite what you may have seen on TV, only about 20% of furry convention attendees have a costume; maybe half spend significant time wearing them).
Is it your right to express an opinon based on your experiences? Hell yes. We’d just rather you didn’t condemn a growing community based on a few bad eggs. Not every episode is The Naked Now. 🙂
Wil, you seem to have the common misconception that furries are all wear about wearing fursuits. Not true. If you take a looo at the membership statistics from the most recent Anthrocon (http://www.anthrocon.org/history-registration-2008), only about 13% of our members wore fursuits.
All that aside, as someone who grew up watching ST:TNG and who has read your blog on and off for the last few years, I can’t help but feel a profound sense of disappointment at seeing some of your more recent comments about furries. I’m starting to sense an attitude that I’ve seen in so many others as they age: spiteful, bigoted, and vindictive. Is that really how you want to be remembered?
Finally, as a general source of information about furries, I would encourage you (and others) to visit WikiFur, the furry encyclopedia: http://www.wikifur.com/
— Doug
I’ve been an anonymous reader here for a while. Have to say that I grew up loving Wil’s work on Trek (as a geek myself).
The furry comment prompted me to register. It’s always hard when you realize that someone you are fond of or hold in high esteem actually dislikes a group that you’re a part of, and passionately so.
That said, he has his reasons, and if leg humping is indeed involved I want to say that I deeply regret it.
I wish it weren’t so but the furry fandom’s overall maturity level is way too low. So, while I am a furry, and I am saddened that Mr. Wheaton would think less of me for it, I have to say to my fuzzy compatriots: grow up just a little more, at least to a level where you can function among other geeky fandoms.
And I will endeavor to keep my green wolfy fursuit away from Mr. Wheaton, even though I myself would not embark upon leg-humping shenanigans.
Furries: a group so accepting that they support child porn!
http://dragoniade.livejournal.com/12551.html
Wil –
Another friend of Abby’s who’s grateful for the link and larger exposure for Merlin Missy’s article over at Firefox news. Thanks for linking to it, and thanks for getting it.
Also, Abby would find the juxtaposition of the furry debate with the post about fandom as friendship and mentions of her death? To be hysterical. She’s cracking up in the afterlife. ;>