Anime and Manga

OTW Fannews: Awesome creations

Submitted by Claudia Rebaza on 24 May 2013 - 3:18pm

Mother Jones wrote about Jennie Lamere, who recently won the "best in show" award at the national TVnext Hack event by helping fans avoid spoilers on Twitter. She did it by writing "Twivo, a new program that allows Twitter users to censor their feeds from mentioning a certain TV show (and its characters) for a set time period." She was the only solo woman participating. "Hackathons (which have nothing to do with illegal hacking) bring together programmers, developers, and designers, who compete to code an innovative new program in a limited amount of time." Lamere has already been approached by a company to market her creation. "She came up with the idea for Twivo the night before the competition, and it took her 10 hours and 150 lines of code to complete."

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OTW Fannews: Collective action

Submitted by Claudia Rebaza on 22 May 2013 - 6:02pm

Fans and the general public are becoming less tolerant of corporate overreaches in copyright claims. A crackdown on Etsy vendors marketing Firefly-related hats caused sufficient outrage that one outlet selling the licensed hats decided to donate its profits to a Firefly charity. Yet as The Mary Sue pointed out, at least part of the anger was because now that "Fox has actually decided to license merchandise based on the ten year old television series" they're "taking shots at the smaller, unlicensed retailers that have been serving the market niche they’ve been ignoring."

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Academia

Entertainment Industries

Intellectual Property

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OTW Events Calendar for May

Submitted by Curtis Jefferson on 26 April 2013 - 4:35pm

Welcome to our Events Calendar roundup for the month of May! The Events Calendar can be found on the OTW website and is open to submissions by anyone with news of an event. These can be viewed by event-type, such as Academic Events, Fan Gatherings, Legal Events, OTW Events, or Technology Events taking place around the world.

MISTI-Con, Harry Potter convention hosted by The Group Who Shall Not Be Named (the New York City Harry Potter Meetup) in cooperation with Ray "The Dark Lord Bartender" Smith and the Margate Hotel, will be held in Laconia, New Hampsire, USA from 9-13 May 2013. The convention will feature panels, programs, academic presentations, exhibits, wizard rock performances, and much more.
Read and Share about MISTI-Con on Fanlore
Vidukon, a United Kingdom-based fan-run convention focused on vidding, will be held in Cardiff, Wales on 18-19 May 2013. The con welcomes vids and vidders from all fandoms and features video shows along with workshops, panels, and even a 'Vid Bazaar' where vidders can swap DVDs of their work.
Read and Share about Vidukon on Fanlore
Celebrating its 31st incarnation, BayCon, the San Francisco Bay area's regional science fiction convention will be held 24-27 May 2013. In honor of this celebration, the program organizers have chosen the theme 'Triskaidekaphobicon' and are planning to explore the darker sides of science fiction and fantasy: phobias, superstitions, thrills, horror, and more. The con features panels, workshops, special guests, meet and greet opportunities, and gaming spaces for fans across the genre.
Read and Share about BayCon on Fanlore
The First Annual Fandom and Neomedia Studies (FANS) Conference will be held in Dallas, TX, on 1 and 2 June 2013. The FANS Conference is hosted and sponsored by A-Kon, the longest continually running anime and manga convention in North America. It will be held at the Dallas Hilton Anatole Hotel. Topics at the conference will include all aspects of being a fan, ranging from being a passive audience member to producing one’s own parafictive or interfictive creations. Neomedia includes both new media, as it is customarily defined, as well as new ways of using and conceptualizing traditional media.

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OTW Fannews: Fanfiction, where can you find it?

Submitted by Claudia Rebaza on 24 April 2013 - 5:07pm

College newspapers are a constant source of stories on fanfiction, but The Varsity tried to take a more comprehensive look at the practice, noting that "fan fiction predates the Internet. In fact, amateur press associations, which first flourished in the early decades of the 20th century, provided a way for aspiring writers to put together and share their own magazines and works of fiction. A distribution manager or official editor would collect the magazines and letter publications and send them to other members of the association. In the 1930s, fans of science fiction magazines printed their own mimeographed or hectographed works which contained their own reviews, printed fiction, and even art."

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Commercial Works Authors

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OTW Fannews: Fandom ignited

Submitted by Claudia Rebaza on 13 April 2013 - 6:06pm

The Japan Times talked about the anime industry catching up to the online revolution. "Today the despised former pirates at Crunchyroll.com — a now-legal multilingual Web portal for non-Japanese anime fans — are leading an industry revolution in content delivery and distribution, and Japanese producers are following their lead. Heavyweight veterans such as Toei, Bandai, Sunrise and others are scrambling to preview and offer their titles internationally via streaming sites like YouTube, Hulu, Niconico and Netflix. A new producer-collaborative streaming anime site, Daisuki, sponsored in part by one of the world’s largest advertising agencies, Dentsu, goes live in April. And a Japan-based site for videos about Japanese pop culture called Waoryu debuted last month."

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OTW Fannews: Fandom investments

Submitted by Claudia Rebaza on 26 February 2013 - 10:18pm

In The birth of a fanboy, writer Larry Sukernik talks about the rationalization people use for their investments in something, as the seed that shifts them from consumer to fan. "[Once] you buy your first iPhone...you’re invested in Apple. Apple’s success is now your success, Apple’s failure is your failure. But why?" The reason is the continuation of the fandom product, because its loss will negatively impact your investment in it. "Not only does that leave you with an abandoned phone, but it also means that you made the incorrect phone choice. You made a bad decision, and you were wrong. Nobody wants to be wrong."

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Commercialization of Fans

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OTW Fannews: Threats to or from fandom

Submitted by Claudia Rebaza on 9 January 2013 - 12:30am

Slate wrote about a recent hacking attack on Tumblr, reporting on how the target was a fandom. "The original target appears to have been the 'brony' tag on tumblr...The first Tumblrs that were infected...used the brony tag, and from there, it seems, thousands of other Tumblrs fell victim, including those belonging to USA Today, the Verge, and Reuters. In a press release announcing today’s attack...GNAA insults brony culture with racist, inflammatory language typical of trolls, before mentioning an upcoming 'brony-removal drive.' The group claims to have infected 8,600 individual Tumblrs with the worm."

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OTW Fannews for 29 September 2012

Submitted by Claudia Rebaza on 30 September 2012 - 12:07am

Here's a roundup of legal and technology stories that might be of interest to fans:

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Anime and Manga

Intellectual Property

Gaming

Books

Entertainment Industries

Technology

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News of Note

OTW Fannews for 20 September 2012

Submitted by Claudia Rebaza on 20 September 2012 - 4:16pm

The Links Roundup posts are getting a new name! The Communications Committee has been using the #OTWFannews hashtag for them at Twitter for a while as it's a more distinctive name for the series and a clearer name for their content. OTW Fannews is meant to be a selective look at discussions of fandom, and issues affecting fans, in both traditional and non-traditional media venues. It also includes interviews where OTW staffers and volunteers have taken part, or discussions of the organization appear.

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Entertainment Industries

Fannish Practices

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News of Note