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OTW Fannews: Uncovering fandom

The Washington Post Reader Express met with fans, including some OTW staffers, at last month's Awesome Con in D.C., then wrote about the "Unforbidden Love" expressed in fanfiction. "Fan fiction is like methadone to a heroin addict, offering a come-down from the high of the original creation. It’s a rebound relationship, filling the gaping hole left when a favorite series ends (or starts to suck)." Although the AO3 is mentioned as a fanfic resource, the article incorrectly states that people must sign up for an account to read its content, rather than to publish content on the site. A bonus for readers? Slashy fanart created for the article.

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OTW Fannews: Asking questions

The number of fandom groups within the general population is still a big unknown, but the MIT student newspaper The Tech decided to find out if its school's nerdy reputation was justified. In a special section that included an interview with fandom scholar Flourish Klink, they published results of an MIT campus survey. One of the more interesting findings was the list of most popular fandoms on campus by either vote (Harry Potter, The Avengers, Lord of the Rings, Batman) or write-in (Ender's Game, Sherlock & Modern Family). The paper compared these results to a survey of 386 non-MIT individuals who were asked what they thought would be the most popular fandoms on either MIT, Harvard, or a state school. The results were the same for all three -- Big Bang Theory, Game of Thrones, Walking Dead, Breaking Bad and Call of Duty. (Survey results can be found on pp.12-13 of the PDF version).

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OTW Fannews: Fandom's role in creation

At Slate, Tammy Oler lauds writer Hugh Howey's approach to dealing with fans in a piece discussing the success of his self-published sci-fi novel. "Most intriguingly, Howey has encouraged readers who want to develop their own Wool stories to self-publish and sell their works. In an interview, I asked Howey about why he’s not just encouraging fan fiction but actually endorsing it. 'There’s room for readers to become writers and play in this world,' he said. 'I view fan fiction as the opportunity to teach readers how much joy there is in creating worlds instead of just living in them.' Right now—much to Simon and Schuster’s chagrin, one has to imagine—the first two of what are sure to be many Wool-related fan fiction stories are available for sale on Amazon."

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OTW Fannews: Fandom relationships

  • After Ellen focused on femslash shipping. "The term femslash can be applied to really any female romantic/sexual pairing between characters, even OTPs, but its original purpose was as a reference to alternative lesbian romances based on subtext. Crackships, which is frankly just fun to say, are pairings that are very unlikely to ever occur. In a nutshell, it comes down to the difference between subtext and pure, fun fantasy."
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    OTW Fannews: Fandom when cash is on the scene

    Although there's been a lot of talk recently regarding fanfic authors going pro, there's been less focus on fan video makers.

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    OTW Fannews: The Best of 2012

  • The end of the year always brings about many lists recognizing accomplishments, and quite a few sites make note of fans. VH-1 cited the Best Shipped Relationships of 2012 including both het and slash couples. "Maybe we just spent too much time on Tumblr over the last twelve months (we really, really did!), but 2012 seemed like a year where shipping was front and center. From New Girl to Sherlock, everywhere we looked shippers were building onto the fictional universes they loved, mostly with smooching. So we decided to pay homage to the most passionately shipped relationships of this year as part of our Best of 2012."
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    OTW Fannews: Women in Fandom

    • The media has apparently decided that there are women in fandom -- a lot of them even! One of the latest features to announce this information appeared in Time Magazine, which unfortunately focused more on how their presence is controversial rather than how their contributions are awesome. But it did counter the idea that female fandom is a novel occurrence.
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    OTW Fannews for 7 October 2012

    Here's a roundup of fanfiction stories that might be of interest to fans:

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