{"id":2703,"date":"2017-11-30T06:54:52","date_gmt":"2017-11-30T11:54:52","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.graymanwrites.com\/blog\/?p=2703"},"modified":"2017-11-30T07:00:56","modified_gmt":"2017-11-30T12:00:56","slug":"fan-appreciation-power-rangers-style","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.grayrinehart.com\/blog\/fan-appreciation-power-rangers-style\/","title":{"rendered":"Fan Appreciation, “Power Rangers” Style"},"content":{"rendered":"

I told this story in my newsletter, but in case you didn’t read it there:*<\/p>\n

Last month I attended the Fayetteville ComicCon, where I had a table on “Authors Alley” and tried to interest as many fans of superheroes and comic books as I could in a certain hard science fiction novel (ahem)<\/a> and genre-related music. I was moderately successful, and the whole effort was worthwhile, but the most interesting part came from observing the people at the booths across the aisle.<\/strong><\/p>\n

Authors Alley was set up directly across from three actors who had been in various\u00a0iterations of the Power Rangers franchise: Nakia Burrise, Jack Guzman, and Alyson Kiperman Sullivan (pictured below). Over the course of the weekend I had the opportunity to watch each of them interact with the fans who stopped at their tables to chat or get autographed pictures, and I came away very impressed with each of them.<\/p>\n

\"
\n(Image from http:\/\/instey.com\/alysonkipermansullivan.)<\/em><\/span><\/p>\n

Without exception, every time a fan\u2014and especially a young fan\u2014came to one of their tables, they paid strict attention to and were fully engaged with that particular person.<\/strong> It didn’t matter whether the fans were young or old, whether they were hale and hearty or arrived in a wheelchair or walking with a cane, these actors remained attentive and surely made those fans feel special. They were present in the moment in a way that was so complete and so palpable that I will reference it from now on as a measure of how well I do in interacting with people at conventions.<\/strong><\/p>\n

And I admit: I generally don’t do very well in those situations. I’m fairly introverted, and find it taxing to be “on” at these events. I would much rather retreat and let my interactions be more limited, but that’s not really an option. (In fact, at that particular event I was guilty of abandoning an interaction with someone; I sent them an apology afterward because I felt bad for having not given them sufficient attention.)<\/p>\n

So, until I see a better example, I consider those Power Rangers — Ms. Burrise, Mr. Guzman, and Ms. Kiperman Sullivan — to have reached the pinnacle of fan interactions.<\/strong>\u00a0Toward the end of the ComicCon I told each one of them separately how much I appreciated the way they treated their fans and how impressed I was. They seemed to appreciate that I noticed and that I told them so, but I don’t think they appreciated my comment as much as I appreciated their examples.<\/p>\n

___
\n*Why don’t you sign up for my newsletter? I’ll send you several thank-you gifts for joining! Use the form in the sidebar to the right of this blog post, or this link<\/a>.<\/p>\n\"Facebook\"<\/a>\"twitter\"<\/a>\"pinterest\"<\/a>\"linkedin\"<\/a>\"mail\"<\/a>by <\/span>\"feather\"<\/a>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I told this story in my newsletter, but in case you didn’t read it there:* Last month I attended the Fayetteville ComicCon, where I had a table on “Authors Alley” and tried to interest as many fans of superheroes and comic books as I could in a certain hard science \u2026 Continue reading → <\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2703","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-science-fiction"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.grayrinehart.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2703","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.grayrinehart.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.grayrinehart.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.grayrinehart.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.grayrinehart.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2703"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/www.grayrinehart.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2703\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2707,"href":"https:\/\/www.grayrinehart.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2703\/revisions\/2707"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.grayrinehart.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2703"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.grayrinehart.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2703"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.grayrinehart.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2703"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}