{"id":29385,"date":"2015-06-17T06:30:01","date_gmt":"2015-06-16T18:30:01","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/helenlowe.info\/blog\/?p=29385"},"modified":"2015-06-16T22:06:24","modified_gmt":"2015-06-16T10:06:24","slug":"celebrating-christchurchs-sir-julius-vogel-award-success-rebecca-fisher-best-fan-writer","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/helenlowe.info\/blog\/2015\/06\/17\/celebrating-christchurchs-sir-julius-vogel-award-success-rebecca-fisher-best-fan-writer\/","title":{"rendered":"Celebrating Christchurch’s Sir Julius Vogel Award Success: Rebecca Fisher, Best Fan Writer"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"Rebecca<\/a>

Rebecca delivering her speech; Photo, P Fitzpatrick<\/p><\/div>\n

Rebecca is taking a short midwinter recess from Big Worlds On Small Screens<\/a>, but —<\/p>\n

Of course, she was one of our “gallery of stars” at the event on Saturday to celebrate Christchurch’s Sir Julius Vogel Award finalists and winners.<\/p>\n

So today seemed the perfect opportunity to feature her speech from the Saturday event, a witty and entertaining insight into her experience of fandom and fan writing.<\/p>\n

I hope you may enjoy it as much as we did on Saturday.<\/p>\n

—<\/h3>\n

.<\/span><\/p>\n

Rebecca Fisher: Best Fan Writer (2014)<\/span><\/h3>\n

“When I was eighteen years old, I wrote my first book review for Amazon.com, and I’ve been blogging and reviewing ever since. The reason for this is simple: I really, really<\/em> enjoy talking about books and films. For that reason, it seemed strange to me that I had won an award simply for having a hobby \u2013 especially since that hobby is writing about other people’s<\/em> writing.<\/span><\/p>\n

\"Photo:<\/a>

Photo: Wei Li<\/p><\/div>\n

This pastime known as “fan writing” involves being a part of on-line fandom, that strange virtual world of forums and fan-sites where people from all over the world gather to discuss television shows, comic books, Hollywood films or Broadway musicals. It’s not difficult to see what brings these people together, and that’s a love of stories.<\/span><\/p>\n

As both a participant and an observer to on-line fan writing, I’ve reached two conclusions. The first is that every hobby \u2013 from golf to stamp collecting \u2013 appears a little strange from the outside looking in. The second is that hobbies are nevertheless taken very seriously by those involved. Sometimes too<\/em> seriously.<\/span><\/p>\n

Back in 2009 the science-fiction show Torchwood, a spin-off of Doctor Who, decided to kill off one of its most popular characters. The negative reaction to this was so intense that fans ended up constructing a memorial shrine to the dead character at one of the show’s filming locations. It was so large and so convincing that the city council of Cardiff had to add an explanatory plaque informing pedestrians that no real person<\/em> had actually died there.<\/span><\/p>\n

But this incident is not without precedent. In 1893, when Sir Arthur Conan Doyle sent Sherlock Holmes plummeting to his death over the Reichenbach Falls, fans took to wearing black armbands of mourning in the street, beginning a public backlash so great that Doyle was eventually forced to resurrect his famous detective.<\/span><\/p>\n

\"Photo:<\/a>

Photo: P Fitzpatrick<\/p><\/div>\n

Though it’s easy to laugh at this sort of behaviour, it’s also a striking reminder of how deeply invested we can become in the stories we are told. If a story is doing its job right<\/em>, it’s engaging reader or viewer on an emotional level. And the natural response to an engaging story is the impulse to share it with others.<\/span><\/p>\n

As such there are millions of individuals out there who share my hobby, using their social media platforms to discuss, critique or recommend stories in whatever form they may take. Fan writing results in all kinds of things: obtaining further insight into a work of fiction, honing your own writing skills by examining someone else’s, or being exposed to new material that you might not have otherwise discovered.<\/span><\/p>\n

As we’ve seen, it’s a hobby that’s not without its oddities. Alongside discourse on representation and diversity and social issues in our fiction, is equally impassioned debate on who shot first: Han or Greedo. Fan writing involves the serious sitting right next to the silly; where emotional investment can easily tip into openly grieving for the deaths of fictional characters.<\/span><\/p>\n

But fan writing is prolific, it’s fun, and it’s a hobby more and more people are getting involved in. And just recently I learned it’s taken seriously enough that awards are given out for it, so for that I say thank you very much.”<\/span><\/p>\n

—<\/p>\n

\"Rebecca\"<\/a>About Rebecca:<\/h3>\n

Rebecca is a Christchurch-based reader, viewer, and reviewer of speculative fiction. A graduate of the University of Canterbury, she has\u00a0 a Masters degree in English Literature \u2014 mainly, she claims, because she was able to get away with writing her thesis on C.S. Lewis and Philip Pullman. Rebecca has been a reviewer for FantasyLiterature.com<\/a>, an international\u00a0 website that specializes in fantasy and science-fiction novels, as well as posting reviews to Amazon.com<\/a> where she is a Top 1000 reviewer. She has been penning the Big Worlds On Small Screens<\/a> column (on SFF film and television) here for two years now and also reviews (predominantly) SFF television on her They\u2019re All Fictional<\/a> blog.<\/p>\n

You can also check out Rebecca’s profile, featured here last week<\/a>, which includes a sample of her award-winning work.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Rebecca is taking a short midwinter recess from Big Worlds On Small Screens, but — Of course, she was one of our “gallery of stars” at the event on Saturday to celebrate Christchurch’s Sir Julius Vogel Award finalists and winners. So today seemed the perfect opportunity to feature her speech from the Saturday event, a […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[17,20,19,14],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-29385","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-awards","category-events","category-funstuff","category-other-writers"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/helenlowe.info\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/29385","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/helenlowe.info\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/helenlowe.info\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/helenlowe.info\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/helenlowe.info\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=29385"}],"version-history":[{"count":15,"href":"https:\/\/helenlowe.info\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/29385\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":29405,"href":"https:\/\/helenlowe.info\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/29385\/revisions\/29405"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/helenlowe.info\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=29385"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/helenlowe.info\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=29385"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/helenlowe.info\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=29385"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}