What Does Fan Convention Mean?
Fandom CultureAn in-person gathering of fans — from massive commercial events to small fan-run cons — featuring panels, dealers' rooms, cosplay, and the rare experience of fandom with faces attached. 'Con' is the universal short form.
Fan Convention in Practice
Conventions predate internet fandom by decades: science fiction cons date to the 1930s, and media fandom's zine culture was distributed substantially through con dealer tables. The modern landscape splits between industry-scale events built around celebrity guests and the older tradition of fan-run cons, including fanwork-centered cons with vid shows, panels on tropes, and programming that assumes everyone reads fic. Cons occupy a complicated place in transformative fandom now that so much of fandom life is online — for many fans a con is the only time their fandom friends exist in three dimensions. Con culture also supplies fic with a minor genre of its own: characters or RPF subjects meeting at conventions.
Example usage
"We'd been moots for six years before finally meeting at a con and screaming in a hotel lobby like reunited war buddies."
Related Terms
Cosplay
Dressing as a character through costume and performance — a portmanteau of 'costume' and 'play.' One of fandom's major creative disciplines alongside fic and art.
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Media Fandom
The historical term for fandom organized around TV shows and films — as distinct from literary science fiction fandom, from which it split in the zine era. Modern transformative fandom largely descends from media fandom's lineage.
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Fanzine
A fan-published magazine collecting fiction, art, and writing — fandom's original distribution medium, now revived as polished collaborative zine projects. Shortened to zine.
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AMV
Anime Music Video — a fan-edited video setting anime footage to music, the anime fandom's branch of vidding. AMV contests have been a fixture of anime conventions for decades.
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More Fandom Culture Terms
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