Slapfights

cristalia  recently posted about how ridiculous slapfights look to outsiders after discovering that there was a knitter-versus-crocheter slapfight. She posted this as a response to a week of SF slapfights about magazine and book covers, the Hugos, the phrase "good enough," and now the SFPA acronym.

I still remember our first introduction to SF slapfights. We were at Odyssey Con, and rarelylynne  was doing her archivist thing. At a party later that night, Senior Tor Editor Jim Frenkel came up to her and gave her some advice about the SF community. You see, Lynne was making the mistake of calling it "sci-fi." Jim informed her that she should really call it SF, a nearly meaningless acronym that most people outside of the community think refers to the city of San Francisco. The reason? A slapfight between writer Damon Knight and Forry Ackerman that started in the 1950s! Back then, Knight and others wanted to differentiate the literature from the B-Movies. Some people are still worried about this.

I've seen this happen in lots of places other than our little SF bubble. Passionate people often lose their perspective. It occurs with baseball fans, special needs parents, religious groups, and political organizations. In many cases, these things really do need to be discussed. Unfortunately, passionate people do tend to get carried away.

I've spent a lot of time in Doctor Who fandom. Here is a list of my favorite slapfights:

1- Williams era vs. JN-T era
2- Pertwee fans vs. McCoy fans
3- Rose vs. Martha
4- Are the books/audios/comics canon?
5- Is the Doctor asexual?
6- UNIT dating
7- The Cartmel Masterplan
8- The destruction of Gallifrey (both times)
9- Who counts as a Companion?
10- Torchwood

Inside our fandom, many of us have very strong opinions about these slapfights. If I start explaining them to the non-fans, however, they would find all of these fights ridiculous. And yet, I have friends who have written millions words of words about these subjects during Internet fights. I know I've been guilty of it. :-)