She was obviously a ComiCon fan in the making. Dressed as her favorite princess, she already had half of the concept covered. The world of Fan Conventions, however, is very foreign to me. But since our February Guest authors spotlight Fan Cons I thought I should do a little digging to better understand the phenomena.
Where else to go for a definition of unique topics, but Wikipedia (which, btw – I just found out has like a 97% accuracy rating. Who knew?) My first aha was that Fan Conventions have been around since the 1930s. Huh? I must have been living under a rock, especially since they were started within the science fiction genre… and I used to l-o-o-v-e science fiction.
My next bit of learning was that they have expanded way beyond science fiction to include all sorts of other topics like Anime, Comics (think Superman), and something called Furry (not even sure I want to know what that one is all about.) In its most simple form, a Fan Convention is a way for fans to share their excitement for and learn more about, their favorite pop-culture genre. They include speakers and parties and give-aways and yes, fans dressed up like their favorite characters.
But then anyone who has a child will recognize this concept. For years my daughter would only go out of the house dressed as one of the Disney Princesses. And, if you think about it, what else is Disneyland but one, big, fan con?
It must be the height of authorship to have one of your characters replicated by thousands, or even millions, of fans. So far I haven’t found a contemporary romance fan con, or an inspirational fan con. There is probably an erotica fan con, but again, I am not going to go there.
So it makes me wonder… what would it take for a romance author (outside of the sci-fi, paranormal or post-apocalyptic genres) to build that sort of fan frenzy?
Let me know if you have the answer… or if there is already a pop-cultural romance icon that I missed.
In the meantime, I’m off to read my favorite comic strip; Calvin and Hobbes, of course.
