Links roundup for 30 April 2012

[otw_staff]

Here's a roundup of stories on explaining fandom that might be of interest to fans:

• A recent article about the Anime Boston con attempted to explain it to non-anime fans by utilizing sports fandom. Contrasting how "you dress up like your favorites", "Your passion infiltrates your “real life” in little ways", "You become (perhaps overly) invested in the outcomes", "It's all escapism", it concludes "It's about community...Boston is a diverse city, full of all kinds of people from all kinds of ethnic backgrounds, education levels, and socioeconomic statuses, but the city’s teams have a quasi-magical way of creating a certain camaraderie among us all, no matter how little we seem to have in common at first." The moral being "Pushing one highly enthusiastic, occasionally very public fandom to the fringe and treating it as a strange obsession while celebrating another is just silly. Otakus are just like everyone else."


• OTW Board member Francesca Coppa took part in a CNN interview explaining fan fiction in connection with the fan fiction origins of Fifty Shades of Grey. The novel might have made history by including a disclaimer about its start online except that it never mentions the words "fan fiction." A divide thus continues in terms of discussions about published erotica versus fan fiction as these two articles by Publishers Weekly and The Frisky indicate, even though both posts are dedicated to connecting Fifty Shades readers with similar content.


• As various recent events attest, fan fiction is moving from text to performance art, introducing it to still more audiences. FanFiction Comedy, a product of the New Zealand comedy scene, consists of the troupe reading fan fiction they have written on stage, and has received a fair amount of press attention. Lawrence Leung's take on it is instead from the POV of someone who has had fanfic written about him. And as this article about an open mic night suggests, fanfic writers everywhere may soon be taking to the stage to share their work. Still others may be sharing their work in ways they wouldn't prefer, as is the case with Mark Watches who is offering to do readings of "bad fic" as a fundraiser.

If you are an anime fan or a fanfic writer, why not discuss it in Fanlore? Additions are welcome from all fans.

We want your suggestions! If you know of an essay, video, article, event, or link you think we should know about, comment on the most recent Links Roundup — on transformativeworks.org, LJ, or DW — or give @OTW_News a shoutout on Twitter. Links are welcome in all languages!

Submitting a link doesn't guarantee that it will be included in a roundup post, and inclusion of a link doesn't mean that it is endorsed by the OTW. Mirrored from an original post on the OTW blog. Find related news by viewing our tag cloud.

Links roundup for 30 April 2012

[otw-staff.livejournal.com]

Here's a roundup of stories on explaining fandom that might be of interest to fans:

• A recent article about the Anime Boston con attempted to explain it to non-anime fans by utilizing sports fandom. Contrasting how "you dress up like your favorites", "Your passion infiltrates your “real life” in little ways", "You become (perhaps overly) invested in the outcomes", "It's all escapism", it concludes "It's about community...Boston is a diverse city, full of all kinds of people from all kinds of ethnic backgrounds, education levels, and socioeconomic statuses, but the city’s teams have a quasi-magical way of creating a certain camaraderie among us all, no matter how little we seem to have in common at first." The moral being "Pushing one highly enthusiastic, occasionally very public fandom to the fringe and treating it as a strange obsession while celebrating another is just silly. Otakus are just like everyone else."


• OTW Board member Francesca Coppa took part in a CNN interview explaining fan fiction in connection with the fan fiction origins of Fifty Shades of Grey. The novel might have made history by including a disclaimer about its start online except that it never mentions the words "fan fiction." A divide thus continues in terms of discussions about published erotica versus fan fiction as these two articles by Publishers Weekly and The Frisky indicate, even though both posts are dedicated to connecting Fifty Shades readers with similar content.


• As various recent events attest, fan fiction is moving from text to performance art, introducing it to still more audiences. FanFiction Comedy, a product of the New Zealand comedy scene, consists of the troupe reading fan fiction they have written on stage, and has received a fair amount of press attention. Lawrence Leung's take on it is instead from the POV of someone who has had fanfic written about him. And as this article about an open mic night suggests, fanfic writers everywhere may soon be taking to the stage to share their work. Still others may be sharing their work in ways they wouldn't prefer, as is the case with Mark Watches who is offering to do readings of "bad fic" as a fundraiser.

If you are an anime fan or a fanfic writer, why not discuss it in Fanlore? Additions are welcome from all fans.

We want your suggestions! If you know of an essay, video, article, event, or link you think we should know about, comment on the most recent Links Roundup — on transformativeworks.org, LJ, or DW — or give @OTW_News a shoutout on Twitter. Links are welcome in all languages!

Submitting a link doesn't guarantee that it will be included in a roundup post, and inclusion of a link doesn't mean that it is endorsed by the OTW. Mirrored from an original post on the OTW blog. Find related news by viewing our tag cloud.