Customer Reviews

Will the Vampire People Please Leave the Lobby? (True Adventures in Cult Fandom)

5 star:		(10)
4 star:		(6)
3 star:		(4)
2 star:		(1)
1 star:		(4)

 

 

When you read this book, you're not reading a tale about Buffy, or of fans in general. You're really reading the biography of a specific "super fan". Allyson Beatrice knows (as she mentions several times) several writers and producers for shows such as Firefly, Buffy, Angel and so on. She has been in Joss Whedon's "sphere" for many years. She has been extremely active and instrumental in the forums about those shows, the efforts to keep the shows going, and the parties.

Allyson would be the first to admit that she's a flawed character, which is a good thing. Reading someone "self praising" through an entire book can get quite tedious. Allyson does mention her high points, but she is quick to point out that she can be nasty and cut-throat in forum postings as well. It makes her more human.

Unfortunately, that's the way she begins the book. She starts by bashing people who love TV shows like Buffy, looking down on them and pitying them. Now, I have to admit that I didn't watch Buffy - the theme of a pretty blonde girl in High School just didn't appeal to me - but I love sci-fi in general. I saw Star Wars ten times when it first came out, and spent my childhood completely immersed in anything sci-fi and fantasy that I could. I read Lord of the Rings at least yearly. So while I didn't feel personal angst about her diatribe against Buffy people, it still bugged me that she - who used to love the show - could turn so easily against people who felt that kinship. It set a poor tone for the book.

I kept going, though. I was rewarded in portions by laugh out loud commentary. Surely anyone who has been on forums can relate to some of the situations described. It has nothing to do with Buffy - it simply has to do with online web forums. In one area she talks about how forum arguments tend to escalate until someone brings up Hitler or Nazis - and that the person who does this is immediately considered as having lost the argument, and the thread is shut down. I happened to have been with my father while reading this, and he had this exact situation happen only a few weeks earlier on a USGENWEB (genealogy) group.

Part of the issue I have with the book is that it makes it seem at times that Buffy fans were unique in their reactions and issues. I can probably cite exact duplicates of pretty much every situation here - from the woman lying about her dying child on a forum for sympathy, to people gathering thousands of dollars to help out a friend they'd never met, to tons of online people meeting together for the first time - in numerous other forums. These are, really, very common things on the web.

I've been to many science fiction conventions. The situations she mentions have actually been going on BEFORE there was an internet (really, there was such a time!). People used to have paper newsletters, mail groups and phone conversations.

So it felt a bit silly to hear for the fourth or fifth time how amazing it was that people who had NEVER MET BEFORE were getting together to see each other! Yikes! They'd only talked remotely before? And now they were in person? Really, this happens all the time. It's neat, but it's common.

So in the end, I had a mixed reaction. I certainly enjoyed some sections. Other, long sections felt more like reading someone's personal diary - with people I'd never met, and who weren't described in enough detail for me to really connect with. Yet other sections felt a little like reading Al Gore talk about how he invented the Internet.

If you've ever been involved in forum activity, this book will probably have areas you really enjoy. I'd highly recommend getting it out from the library - or borrowing a copy from a friend, to glean those gems from the book. But as far as a book that I'd repeatedly read, or that I enjoyed from start to finish, it didn't fall into that category for me.

My reaction to this book was fairly complex. There are parts that I liked a great deal and parts that I did not care for at all. And I'm baffled by the string of five-star reviews. I know there is a lot of room for disagreement about such things and perhaps I'm missing something. I certainly don't see it as being as funny as other reviewers are finding it.

I guess I have to start by explaining my own stance to "fandom." I currently have a somewhat disproportionate number of featured reviews for the shows I most care about, whether DVDs or books, for instance BUFFY, ANGEL, BATTLESTAR GALACTICA, DEAD LIKE ME, WONDERFALLS, LOST, VERONICA MARS, THE OFFICE, HEROES, FRIDAY NIGHT LIGHTS, and their ilk. I also post on one private board (which was formed by invitation only when the old City of Angel board was overwhelmed by trolls and shippers when they shut down the old WB Angel official board) and one public one, the official BSG board on Scifi.com. But that is about all. I've never attended any event connected to any series, never been to any convention, never met anyone I've gotten to know through any Internet board, and apart from buying a beanie baby angel bear to support the Save Angel campaign, never engaged in the vast majority Save the Show activities described here. My reviewing on Amazon comprises almost all of my involvement with almost any show I could mention. So while I'm vaguely familiar with much of what Ms. Beatrice describes, it isn't my world, though I will pit my knowledge of BUFFY and FIREFLY and BSG against anyone. My involvement is--except for the one private board of which I am a member and on which I post 4 or 5 times a day--exclusively with the show and not with "fandom." Watching FRIDAY NIGHT LIGHTS or LOST is not, for me, a communal experience.

Still, much of what is contained in the book is distantly familiar. I know how trolls or shippers (people who focus exclusively on romances on a show rather than overarching themes or character development) can destroy a board. When she writes of Televisionwithoutpity.com's boards, I remember how totalitarian the moderators there can be, reprimanding posters for having written something on THIS thread when any minimally moral person knows that it should have been posted on THAT one (TVWOP does have funny summaries of shows, but it is the least fun board I've ever seen). And I enjoyed reading her when she wrote about boards and stuff. I honestly did. I didn't laugh like the other reviewers say they did. I found it more humorous than funny. But all in all I didn't find it as good as other reviewers found it nor did she describe a world I really wanted to be more involved with. I read an awful lot, watch a lot of TV (always either on DVD or "by appointment"--I haven't "channel surfed" in the past 20 years even once), and watch a lot of movies. Or spend time with real life friends going out to eat, out to get a drink, or out to see a movie. I simply don't have time to be a part of an online community.

I have to confess that the book started off on an extremely alienating note that might have colored the way that I responded to the rest of the book. She starts off her book with a diatribe against people who write academic papers on BUFFY. She writes, "I feel a sense of pity that these folks [the academic admirers of BUFFY] are still stuck in a continuous loop of BUFFY watchage through the show has been off the air for as many years as it was actually worth watching" (p. 3). Setting aside the question of whether the show was worth watching in Seasons 6 and 7 (and I believe it most definitely was, though I will grant it was not as consistently as good as it had been), there is a MASSIVE amount of projection going on here. She states later that the only BUFFY papers she likes reading are the ones about fandom. Those are precisely the ones that I don't like to read. Fandom bores me to tears. What interests me is textual analysis of shows. For a few decades about the only papers about TV shows that were ever written were either about fandom (e.g., endless papers about why people dress up like characters from STAR TREK) or the nature of the medium of television. You will look in vain for more than a small handful of academic papers analyzing concrete themes in a TV series prior to the early nineties. Only in the nineties did people stop writing about fans or what distinguishes TV from reading or movies and start writing about what the shows were about. So, I see her interest in articles about fandom to be incredibly regressive, a fleeing to an age of TV studies that "Thank God!" we had left behind. And if you look over an exhaustive bibliography of BUFFY you will find that the vast majority of articles analyze themes or characters on the show, instead of the audience.

But the main problem with her complaint about academics is the sheer projection. She moves from feeling that she can no longer engage in any kind of meaningful critique to insisting that any attempted such critique is "weird" (p. 2). Almost every paragraph in that chapter, "Everyday Apocalypses," is just stuffed with messy thinking. And I'll admit that some of this is reactive because I engage in such writing. I've published (not on BUFFY but other shows -- though I'm contemplating a paper on the similarities of Xena and Angel, who I think she resembles much more than Buffy) academic pieces on television and am currently working on a book on the rise of heroic women characters on television. Why? Because I'm "stuck in a continuous loop of BUFFY watching?" Well, no. I haven't in fact watched a single episode of BUFFY in two years and perhaps three. But because I am endlessly fascinated with how the portrayal of strong women on television has helped change the way our society thinks about the fundamental feminine virtues. As a single dad I was struck raising my daughter how passionately she reached out for characters she could identify with. For instance, after taking her to her first ever film in a theater, Disney's PETER PAN, she thought that Wendy was the hero of the film. But finding strong female characters for her was tough in the early nineties. There are just so many times you can watch THE JOURNEY OF NATTY GANN and WARRIORS OF THE WIND (the old gutted version of Miyazaki's NAUSICAA OF THE VALLEY OF THE WIND--which bowdlerized or not, contained an endlessly resourceful female as the film's hero).

My point is that people have a wide range of reasons for doing the things they do and I'm pretty confident that they aren't what Allyson Beatrice imagines that they are. So, she projects and sloughs over the myriad reasons that people might write an academic paper on BUFFY. But you simply can't take the reasons why YOU might not be comfortable being the author of such a piece and imagine that it valid analyzing why someone else actually wrote it.

So, this genuinely terrible first chapter really hurt the tone for the rest of the book. I did manage to enjoy much of it. But I never came to love it. I do want to warn potential readers that there is virtually no discussion about any television shows. If you haven't actually seen BUFFY you won't get much of a sense about what it is about from the book. The subtitle is accurate: the book is about fans of shows, not the shows themselves. That isn't to say that there aren't a lot of fun facts about figures attached to these shows. I enjoyed reading about her friendship with Tim Minear, who has been involved with a huge number of shows I love (or might have loved, in the case of DRIVE and THE INSIDE, both killed off way, way too early for my taste). Had she just started off the book by not confusing her subjective reaction to the activity of others with the objective nature of things, I might have liked it a lot more.

The title is clever and the cover is cute, but how relevant or entertaining could stories about "cult fandom" really be to the average reader?

Turns out, very.

Although the book is centered on Beatrice's life online as influenced by the cult classic Buffy the Vampire Slayer, this is not a fan book. In fact, you will find few references to the show itself beyond Beatrice's loving acknowledgment of how fun it was to watch and her gentle puzzlement about the level of fanaticism some people still have for it.

The first chapter explores the author's relationship with the Jossverse, but -- far more importantly -- explains how Buffy and other Jossverse shows brought a group of people together online that became a close-knit community capable of enormous generosity and random acts of kindness. Some chapters explore nuances of life online (such as how communities deal with 'trolls' or with imposters posting about fictional personal tragedy in order to garner attention), and other chapters focus squarely on the specific people who have become Beatrice's family. Especially touching are the chapters about a wedding between two of Beatrice's friends when gay marriage was briefly legal in California and the chapter about how one online community along with writer Tim Minear fully funded a cross-country visit to America for a beloved Israeli member. Other chapters explore the oddities of Beatrice's involvement in this particular fandom, including how she was tasked with finding a home for Joss Whedon's cat and how she ended up running a campaign to save a Jossverse show that she didn't particularly like.

Also notable is the incisive chapter "The Internet Wants Your Daughters" about the myth that everyone online is an axe-murderer or a pedophile. Without dismissing the fact that real dangers can lurk on the Internet, Beatrice explodes these myths and offers real, practical advice about how parents can protect their children without overreacting. It is one of the most honest essays about kids and the Internet out there.

Vampire People is bitingly funny and unexpectedly touching. I blew through the book in three hours and wanted more. Pick up a copy this summer -- I promise you'll find something to laugh at and something to relate to even if you would never dream of talking vampires with strangers.

What started with an interesting premise - internet fandom - fell completely flat. The book isn't about that, it's about how the author has so much time on her hands (one would argue too much), that she can spend all her time online, talking about a tv show. Her writing is lazy - an entire chapter is nothing more than a cut and pasted internet thread. The book's not funny in the least; she seems to be the kind of person that thinks she and her internet friends are hilarious and you just don't get it if you don't agree.

At one point in the book, the author traces her path from internet fan to published writer, making sure to note that she got her contract because of her connections. There's really no need to point that out; it's obvious from the start because this book is awful. It's nothing more than a pat on the back for knowing how to use the internet and a display of how many important people she knows. What's the point?

I was originally drawn to this book because of the name. Then I read the back cover which talked about how this book came about because she was this huge fan of Buffy the Vampire Slayer and since I am too a huge fan of BtVS I figured that I should read it.
The thing is that this book is not about BtVS or Angel, it's about how her original love of these two shows led her to the world of internet forums where she became a regular on several talking about Buffy, Vampires and Joss Whedon. So the book is more about internet forums than anything else. The fact that she became sort of a crusader for the shows and the writer all make for an interesting read but at the same time some parts of the book seem more like a diary, and not a very interesting one at that. She has some really funny stories about the world of fandom and some true and somewhat disturbing stories about internet forums which make the book worth reading.

This book is very, very funny. Allyson Beatrice's voice is incredibly honest and also hilarious, and you very much learn as much about her as you do the internet communities and friendships she describes.

The book points out that these days, this is how many of us meet people- through online communities, whether it be blogs or news sites or the other zillion opportunities there are out there to connect. We don't have the social traditions of the past so much anymore; the only places it seems you can meet people to make friends are work, or, like at bars or something, or if you're lucky enough that you live somewhere where neighbors talk to each other.

Regardless, the concept of internet communities has been looked down on, feared, and shunned. Beatrice does a wonderful job of bringing this phenomenon into the light and removing the stigma attached.

Other essays deal with adventures in Mutant Enemy-verse fandom and there's a conspiring tone to them, as if One Of Us has infiltrated the ranks (well, the rank's assistants) of television culture and is reporting back live from the scene. We're able to live vicariously through her, in a way.

And laugh like hell doing it.

In the early 80's, my supervisor talked to me for two hours about how gaming, specifically D&D, was going to rot my brain, ruin my life and make me lose touch with reality.
All this time, he was packing for a drive to a Civil War battle re-enactment. And he made me call him by the name of his Indian Scout persona.

I'm not a Buffy fan, and probably have never seen the entire movie or an entire episode. But many parts of this book resonate with me. Fandom is often seen as a group of misfits, willing to go to extremes for attention, for commonality. Dressing in costume and acting weird.

Guys that paint their chests in team colors on game day have dressed out more than I ever have. But they're indulged, I'm weird.

This book isn't just the collection of 'once upon a time, at a convention' stories I was expecting. It's more about the community of fandom. I've long thought that the internet was a great unifier. People with the slightest common ground can form a group, a chat, a long-lasting forum. A family.

The search for and ultimate adoption by a family is what Allyson is describing here. I can appreciate that. And it helps reduce the stereotype that meeting the online friend happyfun@Chatplace.com will lead to either steam tunnels and death or kidnapping and death.

You might find the other people who will value you as a person.

From the description, I expected this book to be laugh-until-your-sides-ache funny, a sort of David Sedaris does the internet. Wrong. Not funny. Also, hoped for some behind the scenes action on my favorite show ever, Firefly. Turns out, the author loves Joss Whedon, but hated this show. This book is a personal memoir, essays on the wonderful power of fandom and the great friends she's made, how the web is not a dangerous, scary place.

For a hilarious read which lampoons sci-fi fandom, try Bimbos of the Death Sun by Sharyn McCrumb.

At the stroke of midnight I stop grading papers, writing reviews, or whatever I am doing and start working the new Babble grid while watching the next episode of whatever television series on DVD I am currently watching from start to finish. Having finished "The X-Files" (including "The Lone Gunman") I decided to start watching "Buffy the Vampire Slayer" for the first time in a couple of years. Even though I get every "BtVS" and "Angel" action figure they produce and have been working on getting all of the PW cards for the "Buffy 10th Anniversary" collectible card set, I had not watched a complete episode of either show for a long time. So when Amazon's recommendation feature insisted I would be interested in "Will the Vampire People Please Leave the Lobby? (True Adventures in Cult Fandom)," it seemed like something I should be reading this week.

"Will the Vampire People Please Leave the Lobby?" is written by Allyson Beatrice, who is the cofounder of an events-planning and consulting company that was the result of her involvement in cult fandom. Her name was given to a character who got her face ripped off on an episode of "The Inside," because Beatrice has a friendship with writer-producer Tim Minear, who is one of several recognizable names praising the book on its covers (David Fury and Nicholas Brendon being the most prominent of the rest). In her opening chapter Beatrice makes it clear that one the show was cancelled she moved on and is not interested in the academic dissections that continue to flourish in the wake of the show's demise. However, she is equally clear that once upon a time she would have taken things quite seriously. Beatrice is not a reformed fan of cult television; she is simply removed anywhere from a half-step to two steps from the "BtVS" experience.

This book is a collection of anecdotes arranged topically, and not the chronological record of Allyson Beatrice's descent in the abyss that is cult fandom. The title comes from an outburst by an exasperated hotel employee dealing with the strange people showing up for one of the legendary Posting Board Parties held by "BtVS" fans on Presidents' Day weekend. However, few of the chapters in this book are about the show. There is the horror story of what happened to the fans' posting board when "BtVS" went from the WB to UPSN and how Beatrice came to find a home for Joss Whedon's cat, and there is a chapter devoted to the effort to save "Firefly." But the "True Adventures in Cult Fandom" part of the title is the best description of what you will find inside these pages.

Actually, I ended up relating to this book more through my limited experience on the Amazon.com discussion boards with its ample examples of flame wars and false identities than from watching "BtVS" and other Whedon shows, although I have to say that the chapter where I most felt like a kindred spirit with Beatrice would be "Imposter!" (insert the Bene Gesserit Litany Against Fear here). That was where I fell off the fence and decided to round up on this book. The chapters on "Munchausen's by Internet," "The Internet Wants Your Daughters," and "Random Acts of PayPal" all speak to the best and worst that living online has to offer. The scale ends up tipping towards the better side of the scale and by the end of the book you are convinced this is because that is the case and not just because Beatrice insists on seeing the glass as being half full (karma clearly demands otherwise).

I was a bit worried when I picked up this book because the blurb at the top of the cover compares what is inside to Fresca, and I never liked Fresca. However, it did not take long to abandon the metaphor and enjoy both the anecdotes and the style in which they are written. If you enjoy this book then you should check out Beatrice's website for tales of her latest adventures (if there was ever a second edition of this book, her story of how Joss Whedon ended up autographing a copy of this book would have to be included). You can also find a whole bunch of links to other websites worth exploring (already I have found the unaired episodes of "Drive") is reading this book only whets your appetite for more of the same.

I found this book a disappointment. I wanted a book about Buffy, or at least Buffy fans and their interesting activities. Instead this is an autobiography that happens to be set in Buffy Fandom. It starts out with the author whining about what a mess she was physically, emotionally and professionally. She goes on to say how fandom saved her. The problem is, by starting out so whiny, she makes it hard to care what happened to her or why. It's like reading a notebook or journal kept by a teenage girl. It lacks the wit and humor that might otherwise save it.