SEEKING: ORIGINAL SUPERWHOLOCK FANS
Now seems like a good time for this.
So! Let’s get this out of the way first: I’m not here to belittle you, make fun of you, call you cringey, or whatever other shitty bullying behavior is the cool du jour. We don’t roll like that in my house.
No, reality is quite different.
Hi, my name is Nina and I run a hands-on museum at anime and pop culture conventions that details the history of fandom, and if you’re an original Superwholock fan, I want to interview you.
(I also want your gifsets, fanart, fanfiction, prominent crossover theories, etc.—the paraphernalia that make up a fandom.)
Here’s the thing: Superwholock, along with Rise of the Brave Tangled Dragons (which was somewhat concurrent), is the first fan-created crossover megafandom. This is a HUGE DEAL for a fandom curator, because....almost all of you are still alive!! You’re all primary sources!! YOU WERE THERE!! Speaking as someone who’s normally tracking down 80-year-old Trekkies and diary entries from the original Sherlock Holmes fans 140 years ago, do you have any idea, any at all, how EXCITING that is??? When it hit me that I could cut my work on a Superwholock exhibit in half by doing firsthand interviews instead of having to track down old message boards and Fanlore articles, I literally jumped off my bed and yelled. It’s less work AND it’s a better, more accurate exhibit.
Your experiences in Superwholock are part of fandom history. An important part, in fact. And I have the chance to interview and talk to you FIRST HAND. (That’s every curator’s dream. Ask any curator in the world “if you could have an hour to talk to [long-dead person in their field], would you?” and you’ll get an “are you fucking KIDDING me? Where’s the time machine???”)
Questions I’ll ask you will be things like what drew you to the fandom, how it started out, how you (and others) reacted to major development in the parent fandoms, and what your part of the community was like. You can reply in written form, by doing a video, drawing a comic, whatever you like as long as it’s in an archivable format (meaning I can save it to show people your exact words later; don’t let the phrase “anime and pop-culture convention” fool you, I do my best to follow museum archival best practices and won’t show anything without a provenance). This means I’ll also need either your first name and last initial, or a username you’re comfortable appending to your words. If you’re under 18, I’ll also need a parent’s permission if you want to appear on video. And although I didn’t have a chance to do a full filming of the museum before COVID (I was supposed to show at Phoenix Fan Fusion this year and that was going to be the filmed version....sigh), I can provide you with hard copy from conventions that have shown the museum. And my driver’s license, if you’re a minor and your parents are nervous.
I’d like to add here that while some of the museum’s exhibits are, uh....QUESTIONABLE by modern standards of taste, I have never had to kick anyone out for being disrespectful to older works. (I have had a few people giggle over the typewritten zines because the copy quality is so bad, but that’s of the “wow, dinosaur technology” variety of giggle. You’d understand if you saw them.) You will not be put in a position to have to defend yourself from bullying or fallout. A lot of people look at older works and are actually heartened to see just how long the history of fandom is.
If this is a project that would interest you, please EMAIL ME at [email protected]. And spread the word to other fans you might know!
izzy806
ellievsbear
