Fan Force

Are any of you active in Fan Force? I am most definitely not. I've posted this story a couple of times around the JC, and it's rather outdated, but I figured I'd post it hereand let you all contribute your own Fan Force stories, if any. The meeting described below was in early May of 2002.

Have any of you guys ever been to a FanForce meeting? I went to my first one earlier this week, and I want to tell you all about it.

Birmingham, AL has never had an active FanForce, so this was the very first meeting for us. We decided to meet at a small restaurant called Guthrie's. The only thing this place sells is chicken fingers, and they're yummy.

So I got off of work at 5:00PM and I headed down to Guthrie's, which is only a mile or so from my office. I had never met any of the guys scheduled to attend, so I didn't know how I would recognize the group. I had posted earlier that day what I was wearing (slacks, suspenders, and a necktie, as well as the necessary types of other attire), so I hoped someone would recognize me. I certainly didn't want to call too much attention to the fact that we were a meeting of Star Wars internet geeks!

I parked my car and entered the restaurant. I panned the room for those who looked like they might belong to the group. There was a family of 4 eating in the corner, and they didn't look like the Star Wars types. There was a young couple sitting near a window, gazing longingly into one another's eyes. Obviously, those didn't belong to the group. And then there was a guy who looked to be in his early twenties sitting near the front of the room. He looked regular enough, so I wasn't sure that he belonged to the group either. The only real indication that he might was that he was dressed as Oola from Jabba's palace.

[image=http://www.lucasfan.com/interviews/oola04.jpg]

The other indication was that he had a small tape player on his table blaring "The Imperial March" at full volume. As is common with such old and tiny radios, the sound from the small speakers was terribly distorted, and many of the other patrons seemed to be noticeably distracted by it.

I wasn't quite sure if "Oola" belonged to the group or not, but I stepped over to the table anyway. Sure enough, it was Typical Star Wars fan #1. At first, he seemed to only want to speak in Huttese, but after I stared at him a while he began speaking English, though he insisted on speaking in a Neimoidian accent. Every now and then, he would stand up and I mean bust a move the way the fat dancer in Jabba's palace would. It was quite a sight to behold. And "Oola" kept dipping her head tails in the other patrons' baskets of chicken fingers.

I introduced myself and the conversation quickly turned to the pronounciation of AYBABTU. I told him that I didn't know how to pronounce it. I've only typed it. Then the girl behind the counter called his name so he could come and pick up his food. Instead of stepping up to the counter, he just waived his hand through the air and said, "You will bring me my chicken fingers." The cashier hollered back, "Get 'em yourself!" so he stammered up to the counter to retrieve his dinner.

As he returned, two other attendees walked into Guthrie's -- Typical Star Wars fan #9 and Typical Star Wars fan #5. 9 was decked out in full Red Imperial Guard regalia, and 5 was dressed as a Klingon. 5 also had a plastic parrot tied to his shoulder with a label that said "Millenium Falcon."

[image=http://www.starwars.com/episode-i/feature/20000313/img/helmet2_sm.jpg] [image=http://camera.touchngo.com/funstuff/july42k/klingon.GIF]

They both carried sticks with a piece of masking tape along the side that said "Dwarven short sword." That was crossed out and it had "lightsaber" written over it. Those poor sticks were pretty worn out.

They also ordered their food and came to sit with us. (I'm not sure how they intuitively knew that 1 and I were part of the FanForce group. Perhaps it was 1's green skin and lekku. Am I as bad as them for knowing what lekku are?) After we spoke for a bit, I went to orde

 

I post in my fanforce forum from time to time.
I have never attended a meeting.

-Seldon

 

I've never had any desire to join a fanforce, really. I'm not exactly sure what we'd do...

 

That story always cracks me up.

Getting past the fear/akwardness of meeting people from the internet, let alone SW people, and explaining it to one's spouse was the toughest part for me. Being married to an anti-geek helps keep the nerdery in check. What gave me an edge was the rumors of Celebration 2 coming to Indy had surfaced, and then confirmed to be legit by yours truly, and it turned out a girl that used to babysit us (my brother/sister/I) was leading the group...that was akward, but at the same time I couldn't hide anonymously anymore behind my username any more, so I ran with it.

The first meeting I attended was in a person's appartment. The group was already established, but only had a handful of members, most of whom were related to or dating someone in the group. For the most part we just sat around and talked about our practices in dorkdom...who collects what, who's getting whatever new book. There was food & drinks and it was low key and quite pleasant. What I enjoyed most, actually, was everyone in the beginning was fans of movies in general. You could throw out obsure movie reference jokes and everyone got them. It was nice. It still is, actually, but the group is much, much larger now, and sort of a different animal all together. My life would be quite different if I showed up for dinner and saw Manlaa dipping his leeku in BBQ sauce, I would have quit SW all together.

 

I post in the FanForce here and at their websites www.indyknights.com but I'm still working up the courage to show up to a meeting. And convincing my boyfriend to drive me. Since I'm still carless which is a big problem. If I wasn't I would so be there at least once a month. But alas that is a problem.

~PK~

 

Our FF is much to large and active for me to ever feel comfortable being a part of it.

Actually, that sounds very similar to most girls' first reaction to me...

 

Fan force once beat me with a club and burned my house down.

All because I called it's mods willfully incompetant.

Geez talk about overreacting.

 

Jim, I thought I told you to quit being so hard on yourself...a girl's never going to like you with that attitude.

 

I once thought about attending a Fan Force meeting. I still might, some day.