Local Fandom

You know, I could continue to preface every post title with 'CandidGamera Vs.', but I think the big banner at the top pretty much covers that. Still finding my groove as a nerd-blogger.

I wanted to take a minute to talk about Fandom in West Virginia.

Honestly, a minute's about all it would take. The nerdly pursuits are all more popular in urban areas, or, at least, they have enough participants concentrated in a small enough area to hit critical mass - the critical mass necessary to sustain a long-term interest. West Virginia is decidedly not-urban.

West Virginia has a few comics stores - primarily concentrated around our largest urban areas. It has very few gaming stores - to buy roleplaying accessories, I tend to have to special-order or scrounge through local Barnes and Nobles. I'm fortunate enough to live in the Morgantown-Fairmont area, which is home to our largest and third-largest universities - I can only imagine how much more difficult it is to find stores in the rural areas.

And that's just the stores - then there's the matter of actually finding gamers. That wasn't too challenging when I was attending West Virginia University, but these days, it can be difficult.

All hope is not lost, however. West Virginia actually has an annual gaming convention, CharCon, and an annual anime convention - Tsubasacon. Near as I can tell, both conventions are under a thousand attendees, but growing a little each year. That gives me hope. Maybe I'll even get to one of them this year or next.

New comics are delayed this week, due to the Labor Day holiday - expect a list up tomorrow. And I'll probably do another Table Talk segment this week.