Speak Stiltedly and Wear a Yellow Shirt

Word count: 1734

Seema sends huggles to all of Trek fandom for, essentially, not being ville fandom. I second that huggle, and raise her a List of What’s Right About Trekdom:

Trek has one central archive, Trekiverse. It may be a couple of years behind, but anything that’s missing can be looked up in Google Groups. There are a few minor archives as well, such as the ones at JuPiter Station, Voyager’s Delights and the J/C Index, but they’re mainly link lists. No one gets any status in Trek for running an archive, certainly not BNF status. Insufficient Reluctance is appreciated and occasionally even thanked, but never worshipped.

Trek has a newsgroup. You can follow alt.startrek.creative and never, ever have to join a mailing list. This has worked well for Lori, and, aside from the lists I own, I don’t follow anything but ASC. I get all the good fic that way, because anyone who writes well eventually ends up at ASC. Since no one owns the newsgroup, no one gets any status out of it. Since the newsgroup is the main forum, no one in Trek is a BNF because she controls a pivotal list. None of the lists are pivotal - they can all be ignored without impairing your fan experience. (In fact, it would probably improve it.)

Trek has no blogging culture to speak of. A few of us still write Trek and blog, too, but there is no serious blogging about Trek fandom itself. For example, Seema and Lori blog mainly about their Real Lives, and my blog leans heavily towards science fiction and technology. Liz is all HP, Christine is AWOL. When we meta it’s cross-fandom, because the meta and blog culture we’re exposed to is cross-fandom. There’s no blog-based fan-wankery in Trek worth commenting about, because the BNF’s don’t blog (Seema excepted). So while you can make a name for yourself in certain newer fandoms by picking arguments with people who are lower on the BNF totem pole than you are and rubbing elbows with the Higher Fans (or vice versa), in Trek nobody can hear you blog.

Trek has geeks. It’s not something that fan writers think about often, but I believe the geek contingent lends a certain tone to, say, TrekBBS, and that attitude leaks down to the fanfic level. The fact that there is a Trek fandom beyond fanficcers makes the fandom less inbred than in shows where the fandom, is, essentially, the fanfic contingent. It gives us a bigger audience, more potential writers, and a place to farm out people who can’t write but still want to be fans. To be Myers-Briggs about Trek geeks, they tend to be N’s rather than S’s, since S’s don’t care for science fiction. They know what a light year is. They believe in IDIC. They can fake the technobabble. They may even know how to carry on a rational argument.

Seema said “mostly rational,” and it’s true that Trek has a few sockpuppets who are a great source of amusement on ASC. Trek has a few backwaters in which people can build up a sort of localized BNFdom, but when they venture out into the Real World of Trekdom, nobody knows their names. Whining about contests or other fans or the way the series ended just doesn’t cut it out here. Trek fandom is fair: everyone can write whatever pairing or fanfix they want, everyone can post to ASC, and everyone gets a fair shot in the ASC Awards. Nobody is in control, and nobody’s opinion counts for more than anyone else’s. There’s nothing to gripe about. We’re living in Gene Roddenberry’s perfect future out here.

Trek does have a few vile and irrational fans who think they can raise their status in fandom by attacking other people, but the truth is, they can’t. This isn’t high school, where cutting the other children down and puffing yourself up makes you popular. Nobody cares who’s in your clique or mine. Trek fans are adults.

In Trek, it’s all about the show and the fic. If you have nothing interesting to contribute, nobody will listen to you. If you can’t write like Penny Proctor, you’ll never be a BNF. Those are the breaks. Other fandoms should be more like Trek, and it’s just their bad luck that they haven’t the geeks, the newsgroup, and the adults it takes to Be Like Us.

This entry was posted on Monday, November 4th, 2002 at 1:21 am and is filed under Trek. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.