• 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. "Karen Healey suggests that “many fandoms have been primarily female (often white, middle-class, straight, cisgendered women — but again, not exclusively) spaces for a very long time, often co-existing beside primary male fandoms for the exact same media. Women in the ’80s were trading stories and arguing about the plot arcs of Star Trek and Dr. Who, much as they do now.” That’s a point that writer and editor Rachel Edidin agrees with. “Modern fan culture has always been female-driven,” she says. “The ferocity with which people engage and identify with fictional media and build subcultures around it seems to develop in inverse proportion to their social power. There’s a case to be made for the intensity of women and girls’ engagement in fandom — especially narrative and/or direct-engagement fandom like fan fiction or cosplay — as a cultural underclass co-opting a dominant narrative in which they’re overwhelmingly underrepresented as both creators and characters.”
• Features about female majority fandoms do seem to be multiplying. Writing for Grantland, reporter Sam Lansky discussed his experiences with K-Pop fandom. "The term “idol” correlates with the tendency toward celebrity apotheosis worldwide, but in the States, it’s rare to find anyone other than Ryan Seacrest use it to describe a pop star, since I don’t know that American fans care as much about idolatry so much as they care about themselves. Consider the instances of stalking, hacking, and B&Es targeting celebrities in the Western world...All of these aims are ultimately selfish ones, crassly commercial or materialistic. For the sasaeng fans, the business of deifying K-pop stars serves no indirect function: The lawless obsession isn’t a means to an end, it’s an end itself."
• Meanwhile at The Awl, Rachel Monroe takes a look from the inside rather than the outside at celebrity fandoms. "The crush was a private thing that happened in my room, but it was also a shared activity between friends...Our crushes weren't about anything as simple as attainability, or kissing. You couldn't take Paul McCartney to the homecoming dance; the very idea was absurd, because the homecoming dance was an absurd nothing, especially when compared with the immensity and violence of our feelings. My mom should've understood. At the Beatles' 1966 concert in Chicago, she'd had to slap my Aunt Martha hard to get her to stop from screaming herself into a faint. From the teenyboppers to the Beliebers, teenage girls have been mocked for their crushes, but that scorn is just a shoddy mask for the anxiety these crushes inspire."
• In writing about the strategy of promoting fantasy sports to its fans, FOXSports writer Reid Forgrave suggests women respond to fandoms differently. "The NFL knows what it’s doing here. Its embrace of fantasy football...gives fans a sense of control over this sport where many of us are priced out of attending more than a game or two a year." And “[o]nce you were able to create a competition within a competition, you brought those niche audiences to your television to watch your product,” said Ryan Fowler, the FOXSports.com fantasy editor. “That’s where it changed, where you were able to get women to see what the guys liked about it.”"
• Women are also making gains in being recognized on the professional side. The Mary Sue noticed that half the Hugo Award winners were women this past year, including the winners for best fan artist and best fancast.

If you have things to say about female fandom, why not write something for Fanlore? Contributions are welcome from all fans.

We want your suggestions! If you know of an essay, video, article, podcast, or link you think we should know about, comment on the most recent OTW Fannews post. 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.

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

• The media continues to keep trying new angles on Fifty Shades of Grey stories. Some of the more interesting ones focused on an analysis of whether readers are actually finishing the book, the ethics of pulling fanfiction to publish, and the plans of its original publisher: "Caught in the blinding arc lights of a publishing phenomenon, Hayward was spent. The publicity was intrusive and bruising, the fun of the original enterprise curdled by lawyers and confidentiality agreements. Sitting on a panel at the Southern Highlands Writers' Festival in July, Hayward was representative of the new force of social media and niche publishing. The passion of that audience of book lovers reminded her that the real purpose of publishing was to tell stories, a dawning that rekindled her flagging enthusiasm."
• Indeed news stories about fellow Twilight-AU writer Sylvain Reynard, suggest that going pro can be a real hit to one's privacy. The author lauded the embrace of the fan community in an MTV interview. "C.S. Lewis once said, 'We read to know that we are not alone.' I would add to that, 'We write to know that our words have meaning.' When I began writing my first novel, I was writing for myself. I was examining issues of suffering and loss, love and forgiveness and trying to find meaning. As a first-time novelist, I knew little about where to go or what to do in order for my work to be read. This community welcomed my words and me. Members of the community continue to read my writing and to encourage me. In addition, the community is very active in raising awareness and donations for various charities, including organizations that help children, cancer patients, and for humanitarian efforts in the wake of recent natural disasters at home and abroad. They are one of the most socially active and generous groups of individuals I’ve ever had the privilege of knowing."
• Author MG Harris suggested that we’re all writing fan fiction now. "As a former writer of fanfic, I tend to stick to the original principles – it should be free. Like many, I was baffled by the craze for poorly-written erotica, not because I doubted that people wanted to read it, but because I was baffled that people didn’t know how to type ‘free erotic fiction’ into a search engine, and were therefore prepared to pay to download it." At least some journalists seem to have taken the search advice to heart. It seems like all current news stories now have their accompanying "fan fiction pointer" stories -- whether it's the Olympics or the selection of a vice-presidential candidate. But Harris pointed out something else: "I’d say that fanfics have already surpassed the earnings of their inspirational texts. All vampire stories are Dracula fanfic, but Anne Rice probably earned more than Bram Stoker and Stephanie Meyer earned more than Anne Rice. EL James looks set to earn even more than Meyer."

If you're already building a fanfic search engine, or drawing your inspiration from the AP Newswire, share your experiences on Fanlore! Contributions 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. 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.

Here's a roundup of legal and technology stories that may be of interest to fans.

• While bills such as SOPA and PIPA disappeared from the U.S. legislative landscape earlier this year, they were only the first of many volleys targeting Internet users and companies. There is S.2151 sponsored by Senator John McCain, and the Lieberman-Collins Cyber Security Act or S.3414 which will likely be coming up for a vote soon. A recently proposed amendment to S.3414 would strike all of its section 701 "which provides companies with the explicit right to monitor private user communications and engage in countermeasures." Organizations such as the EFF and the Center for Democracy & Technology oppose these bills as they feel the language is overly broad and that current laws already enable online service providers to protect their networks.
• Speaking of SOPA and PIPA, the coalition of online companies, websites, users and activist organizations who fought those bills realized after that fight that they should enable quick mobilization of their group when future threats arise. As such, they formed the Internet Defense League, which will help spread information around the web through participants hosting a form of bat signal. Anyone with a website can sign up to take part. Online users can take various steps to defend their Internet rights from signing documents to donating to PACs.
• One thing central to Internet freedoms is keeping the means of production in the hands of as many people as possible. To that end, things like Google's video production workshops are a plus for fans and general online users alike as is the availability of the Creative Commons content on YouTube. Cathy Casserly, CEO of Creative Commons (CC) urged those with content on the site to "select 'Creative Commons Attribution license' from the 'License and rights ownership. menu." You can now also choose to "license your future videos under CC BY as a default."
• One example of the extent of transmedia, or stories created across multiple formats, is discussed by Jan Bozarth, whose Fairy Godmother Academy began as an eight book series for Random House, but quickly expanded into live events, music, and even its own dance movement. Her projects seek to enable girls to utilize technology for their own storytelling. "We all agree that we are not our iPods, iPads, Dr. Drea’s, or Thom’s. They are US. We live in the real world, but it’s got to be a world of our making and those tools help." Her project goal was "to deliver a multi dimensional story, in multiple forms, to a multi-tasking audience, who really just wants to write their own movie and star in it." She also realizes the story is only hers to start, not finish. "I can’t really own [the stories] once they are assimilated into a culture that consumes ideas only to transform, transmute and re-create. My biggest audience may or may not be born yet but my hope is that they will someday dance, sing and write some version of my story and send it back to me in another form that hasn’t even been invented yet. What lives on is the re-creation."

If you have things to discuss about fandom and the internet or transformational fandom, why not write about 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 at transformativeworks.org. 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.

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

• Some good news on the net neutrality front is that The Netherlands and Chile are the first two countries that have enacted "firm net neutrality laws" which are designed to prevent "ISPs from blocking or slowing down different types of internet traffic. It also stops ISPs from charging extra to access specific websites or services."
• Less happy is the case of Braindeadly, a British World of Warcraft commentator, who discovered he will no longer be able to do his commentaries because "when he signed a contract with Machinima, the video game network on YouTube, he signed for life." His is not the first such case. "In an interview with the Daily Dot last year, Household Hacker manager Justin Matthew said YouTubers, especially the younger ones, get taken advantage more often than not when it comes to fine print in contracts...'Some YouTubers overlook the fine print because they are so happy to be signed and I think some people could have gotten a better deal if they had a manager.'"
• Of course some people with managers still run into legal trouble as in the case of artist Richard Prince, who is fighting a legal ruling of over copyright infringement. Prince's legal team is arguing that his work is transformative and thus fair use. "'What the court missed unfortunately in the trial court level with Richard Prince,' Rutledge says, was 'the work that he has made using imagery including some from Patrick Cariou's photographs says something different, something new.'" The case is one to watch because "[i]t's rare for fair use lawsuits in the visual arts world to get to court at all, and that's why everyone is watching the outcome in Cariou v. Prince." That includes "the search engine Google, which filed its own friend of the court brief in the case. In order to help you find what you're looking for on the Internet, Google has to copy a lot of copyrighted material — without commenting on it at all. Google's lawyers say a narrower reading of fair use could be 'dangerous' to the company's business model."
• For artists and crafters concerned about copyright infringement in regards to their artwork, a free booklet titled Know Your Rights is available from Interweave.com, an art and craft media company. While the company writes from the standpoint of preventing copyright infringement of its own works, it does address specific questions that craft hobbyists and resellers sometimes ask, such as the crafter's own copyright or use of images on social media sites such as Pinterest. Registration is required to download it.

If you're a fannnish crafter, World of Warcraft player or interested in net neutrality and copyright matters, why not contribute to 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.