Snowflake Challenge #7
Yes, skipped #6. Might post it later, depending.
Snowflake Challenge #7
In your own space, tell us about 3 fandom resources, spaces, or communities you use or enjoy. (One or two is fine, especially if you're in a smaller fandom!)
I have only one space/resource/community to recommend, but it's something that has brought me enormous pleasure and which I recommend to other fans, pretty much whatever you may be a fan of.
This is a get-together, in person, and was born from two things:
a) I met
nopseud at a sci-fi media convention, and she lured me cunningly into popslash;
and
b) we used to have 'sparkly weekends', getting together to enjoy our fannish things.
So why not expand the small weekends to a large weekend, with more fans, and have our own mini-convention for popslashers?
So we did.
After the very first Camp, the weekends morphed into weeks, and we have enjoyed many weeks together, with up to 21 or so of us hiring a 'cottage' for the week, self-catering, and going about doing tourist stuff in the locality as well as staying in to watch fannish footage, talk, and play games.
I recommend this. I recommend this very strongly. Seriously, there has been So Much Fun at these gatherings, plus I have visited different bits of this country and explored places I'd probably never have been to without Camp. We've developed our own traditions, one of which is to have Afternoon Tea together somewhere nice. Another is Kringle. Another was the infamous Add Five Words story, which is what it says on the tin, and was mercifully abandoned in more recent times. The Hug Line will always be a Thing Of Joy.
If you have, perhaps, a reasonably compact fandom, and can with geographical convenience provide somewhere interesting to visit, I strongly recommend meeting some of your online co-fans for this kind of holiday. Vacation, whatever.
The UK is a good place for this, as we have found plenty of choice in large holiday cottages, and frankly, you can't chuck a brick in England without hitting something of historical interest, so there is plenty to do. Our Camp Sparkle has always been attended by fans from across Northern Europe, and always at least one American as well. Fans who want to meet up with other fans they know online will be prepared to travel quite some distance. (Not right now, of course, as Circumstances do not permit, but someday....)
We have found, over the years, that we need
- a good kitchen, preferably with two fridges and two dishwashers
- a dining table large enough for us all to be able to eat together
- a supermarket, or at least a grocery shop, within walking distance (there are two or three cars available to the group, which works for the Big Shop at the beginning of the holiday, but it's not fair to dispatch the same person over and over again to pick up more bread, more Diet Coke, or whatever)
- decent WiFi
- lots of bathrooms(!!!)
- single beds, or zip-and-link, as people mostly prefer not to share actual beds.
It also really helps to have someone who can front the payment for your chosen venue, and be paid back when everyone arrives.
Options include the hiring of a minibus, particularly in the days when we had only two cars available for conveying the group. We've also held a Feast or Party of some kind during the week, including one particularly memorable Christmas In June.
And we have visited Winchester and Salisbury cathedrals, Stonehenge, Chatsworth House (they do the *best* Afternoon Tea), Brighton Pier and the Pavilion, the Mary Rose at Portsmouth, Hardwick House, a selection of Edward III's Welsh castles, several beautiful gardens, a slate mine, the seaside, Roman Baths, York Minster, a concert at the O2, so many more. We have ridden on a steam train in Yorkshire and a cable car in Llandudno, and sat in a hot tub in the snow.
Your experience will be different. Your fan group may not be as awesome as mine-indeed, it's hard to see how it could be. A mini-con like this requires quite a bit of planning, and you won't be able to please, or accommodate, everybody. But it is really, really worth doing.
If anyone is seriously planning to do this I will be happy to give you more specific advice. This entry was also posted at https://pensnest.dreamwidth.org/722748.html. Please comment at Dreamwidth if you can-you don't need an account.
Snowflake Challenge #7
In your own space, tell us about 3 fandom resources, spaces, or communities you use or enjoy. (One or two is fine, especially if you're in a smaller fandom!)
I have only one space/resource/community to recommend, but it's something that has brought me enormous pleasure and which I recommend to other fans, pretty much whatever you may be a fan of.
This is a get-together, in person, and was born from two things:
a) I met
nopseud at a sci-fi media convention, and she lured me cunningly into popslash;
and
b) we used to have 'sparkly weekends', getting together to enjoy our fannish things.
So why not expand the small weekends to a large weekend, with more fans, and have our own mini-convention for popslashers?
So we did.
After the very first Camp, the weekends morphed into weeks, and we have enjoyed many weeks together, with up to 21 or so of us hiring a 'cottage' for the week, self-catering, and going about doing tourist stuff in the locality as well as staying in to watch fannish footage, talk, and play games.
I recommend this. I recommend this very strongly. Seriously, there has been So Much Fun at these gatherings, plus I have visited different bits of this country and explored places I'd probably never have been to without Camp. We've developed our own traditions, one of which is to have Afternoon Tea together somewhere nice. Another is Kringle. Another was the infamous Add Five Words story, which is what it says on the tin, and was mercifully abandoned in more recent times. The Hug Line will always be a Thing Of Joy.
If you have, perhaps, a reasonably compact fandom, and can with geographical convenience provide somewhere interesting to visit, I strongly recommend meeting some of your online co-fans for this kind of holiday. Vacation, whatever.
The UK is a good place for this, as we have found plenty of choice in large holiday cottages, and frankly, you can't chuck a brick in England without hitting something of historical interest, so there is plenty to do. Our Camp Sparkle has always been attended by fans from across Northern Europe, and always at least one American as well. Fans who want to meet up with other fans they know online will be prepared to travel quite some distance. (Not right now, of course, as Circumstances do not permit, but someday....)
We have found, over the years, that we need
- a good kitchen, preferably with two fridges and two dishwashers
- a dining table large enough for us all to be able to eat together
- a supermarket, or at least a grocery shop, within walking distance (there are two or three cars available to the group, which works for the Big Shop at the beginning of the holiday, but it's not fair to dispatch the same person over and over again to pick up more bread, more Diet Coke, or whatever)
- decent WiFi
- lots of bathrooms(!!!)
- single beds, or zip-and-link, as people mostly prefer not to share actual beds.
It also really helps to have someone who can front the payment for your chosen venue, and be paid back when everyone arrives.
Options include the hiring of a minibus, particularly in the days when we had only two cars available for conveying the group. We've also held a Feast or Party of some kind during the week, including one particularly memorable Christmas In June.
And we have visited Winchester and Salisbury cathedrals, Stonehenge, Chatsworth House (they do the *best* Afternoon Tea), Brighton Pier and the Pavilion, the Mary Rose at Portsmouth, Hardwick House, a selection of Edward III's Welsh castles, several beautiful gardens, a slate mine, the seaside, Roman Baths, York Minster, a concert at the O2, so many more. We have ridden on a steam train in Yorkshire and a cable car in Llandudno, and sat in a hot tub in the snow.
Your experience will be different. Your fan group may not be as awesome as mine-indeed, it's hard to see how it could be. A mini-con like this requires quite a bit of planning, and you won't be able to please, or accommodate, everybody. But it is really, really worth doing.
If anyone is seriously planning to do this I will be happy to give you more specific advice. This entry was also posted at https://pensnest.dreamwidth.org/722748.html. Please comment at Dreamwidth if you can-you don't need an account.