• Communities of fanfic writers took their writing group practices online decades ago. On the Media reported on a commercial copy of these spaces, dubbing it "virtual workshopping. A website from Penguin Publishing, Book Country, enables thousands of writers to exchange manuscripts and notes and self-publish their work. A few have even gotten traditional publishing deals through the site." Other than the book deals, the mechanisms sound familiar. "[I]f a writer has written something that is just awful, not very many people will comment on it or they will comment briefly and respectfully but not say very much; there's a sort of graceful fade away. And the second thing that can happen is a manuscript that might seem terrible to one reader seems fantastic to another, because they are the right audience for it. You can find sub-categories and niche audiences that you wouldn't otherwise access."
• While not commercial, Caroline Siede wrote in A.V. Club about a fandom practice that has been automated, making gifs. "Gifs have long been the bread and butter of Tumblr—the perfect way to capture every moment of Dean/Castiel sexual tension, every David Tennant eyebrow raise, and, apparently, every moment of Omar Little badassery...Either to mock these fans or to help them celebrate their beloved Wire by capturing even more moments from the show, programmer Darius Kazemi has created a robot that posts a random gif and an accompanying line of dialogue from The Wire every hour."
• At SB Nation an "experiment" in writing fanfiction to accompany a photo turned into dueling fics when "my effort at fulfilling this assignment struck my esteemed girlfriend as so gross that she would not let it stand but composed her own rival fan fiction Friday to bring the touch of urbanity to the proceedings."
• Hero Complex interviewed Eric Moro, Wikia’s director of entertainment programming and asked "Why a collaborative effort between professionals and an online fan community?" to which he replied "[O]ur various anime and manga communities draw incredibly large audiences from all over the world. So hosting a project in this space allowed us to play at a global level. Second...it’s more about the creator that’s involved than it is about the character(s). Third, comic book, movie and TV characters are all tied up in complicated rights issues/licenses. And while we’re just starting to see networks work in this space (“The Vampire Diaries” fan fiction through Amazon’s Kindle Worlds, for example), it’s still not an idea the industry has fully embraced."

What "ripped from fandom" stories have you seen? Write about them on 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.

• The Massachusetts Museum of Contemporary Art opened a new exhibit last month called Love to Love You which "gathers art work that takes fan culture as a cue to examine not only the specifics of how we express affection for people far removed from us, but also what that means beyond the exact relationship between audience and creator." The exhibit focuses primarily on music and sports fandoms. "Elissa Goldstone creates objects where there is some resemblance to merchandise or objects that circulate in fan culture, but because of the handmade quality of it, it really has very emotive aspects. It also has a performative aspect, because she sits and watches games and keeps scorecards and then embroiders them, so it's fan identity as performance that then gets transferred to an object."
• While stories such as a fan's walk-on role in "The Office" finale tend to get press for linking fans to creators, places such as The Keysmash blog have been celebrating fandom stories for their personal aspects. In one post a mother realized that fandom could be her community in many ways. "Folks were open and welcoming. I met other women with special needs children and we could talk out our problems and delight in our kids. I met women who had battled depression and anxiety too and I learned from them. I met writers who encouraged me to follow my passion for it. I met women who were not afraid to write and talk about kinks. I met artists who just blew my mind with their talent and creativity. I met runners and fitness gurus who helped me run two 5Ks...I met people from all over the world with different lives and different experiences and different knowledge and I basked in it and shared what I could with them...I am the healthiest I have ever been in mind, body, and spirit and it is all because a prince and a sorcerer couldn’t stop eye-fucking each other."
• The SplitSider focused on fandom's effects on a larger scale by discussing The Arrested Development Documentary Project just as Netflix resurrected the series. The film "flips between interviews with...creator Mitch Hurwitz, seven of the nine regulars, and the show’s producers- and thoughts from die-hard fans of the show. Featuring interviews with passionate Arrested Development fans is a great idea. After all, it's the fans that kept the show alive, making it the cult hit it is today. Unfortunately, this technique doesn’t entirely work. For one thing, the fans [are] never identified—it’s a string of anonymous faces and a brief cameo from Keith Olbermann. And all the enthusiasm in the world doesn’t necessarily make someone an eloquent orator, able to clearly articulate the brilliance of the series."
• Fan eloquence can shine in individual posts, however, utilizing more than just words. One post among the Month of Meta's offerings on Dreamwidth discusses fan expression on Tumblr and why "feels" have come to be. "The term is, far from being a corruption of the language, an elegantly precise word that serves a very useful function. So next time you feel reluctant to say something 'hit you right in the feels' or to cry out 'ow, my feels!' embrace your inner fan, let go of your inner grammarian, and go for it!"

What tributes to fandom have struck a chord with you? Write about it in 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.

• Spectacle: The Music Video is "the first museum exhibition to celebrate the art and history of the music video...the exhibition reveals the enormous influence music videos have had on contemporary culture over the past 35 years." Included in the exhibition are fan videos -- Killa and T. Jonesy's vid "Closer" and Luminosity's vid "Vogue". The exhibit opened on April 2 at the Museum of the Moving Image in NYC and continues until June 16.
• Former OTW Board member Francesca Coppa's Transmedia vs Fan Media presentation was live blogged and made available on Swarthmore University's website. "Coppa shifts to discussing vidding, the making of fan music videos out of television or film clips. Vids translate “from narrative to poetry.” Vids are lyrical and emotion-driven rather than plot-driven works...Coppa asks the audience to take a few notes while she shows a series of Harry Potter vids, paying special attention to narrative structure, color manipulation, timing and editing, and song choice. Everything in vids is intentional."
• One advantage of fanart is the way it can cross language barriers to spread fandom joy. Aja Romano wrote about a fanart challenge that began in Japanese-language Sherlock fandom and spread on Tumblr to its English-language counterpart. "Taken together, the works of fanart from 101 Japanese-language artists form a meme collage...Though each one is using the same basic body pose and layout, when viewed closer, they're all different." The meme has since spread to other fandoms.
• Wired wrote about charity fundraisers in a variety of fandoms. "Here’s the thing about geeks...more than just about anyone, we’ve figured out how to digitally connect with each other, and how to use the internet as an extension of ourselves. Yes, some of our time will always be spent arguing over whether Matt Smith or David Tennant is the better Doctor — but that same passion, interconnectivity, and OCD-ness can be used for good. The trick is to keep that in mind — even when somebody’s totally wrong about Doctor Who — and see what else we can accomplish."

If you have your own fandom activities to talk about, write an entry in 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 academic takes on fandom remixes that might be of interest to fans:

• At the digital industry conference NEXTBerlin, presenter James Bridle utilized fan fiction in his talk "Metaphors Considered Harmful." The piece was about the development and changes in stories over time and across storytellers: "Every time we retell the same stories we are also acting on them, we are changing them in some fundamental way." He included a segment on Fifty Shades of Grey's evolution from Twilight fanfic, saying "There's a lot of anger about it from professional writers and publishers because they don't like fanfiction, they think that that's somehow a lower form of writing. But they're idiots because Borges wrote fanfiction as well." After explaining how Borges rewrote Lovecraft who rewrote Poe, he said "All of these stories are layered one on top of the other."
• Bridle then cited fans' use of Omegle to write Harry Potter roleplay fic and explained slash to the audience. He noted that the fact that they are queer stories often authored by women opens up a whole discourse on why the audience might want to take possession of the stories, and that slash fiction adds characters, voices and ideas not existing in the original stories. He then comes to his thesis which is that too much happening in the technology world is attempting to stick close to canon rather than opening itself up to new ways of thinking. (No transcript available)
• An example of what Bridle was driving at can be found in Classic Movies in Miniature Style. Turkish art student Murat Palta created it as part of a graduation thesis. "It all started 2 years ago with an experiment to blend traditional ‘oriental’ (Ottoman) motifs and contemporary ‘western’ cinema. After a positive response to "Ottoman Star Wars", I decided to take the theme further, and developed more film posters using the same technique. Combining global with local, traditional with contemporary, and adding a bit of humor made it a fun and rewarding experience for me." It also suggested Bridle might be right when he concluded that "the Internet is human fanfiction."

If you're part of Twilight, Harry Potter, or Star Wars fandoms or have things to say about how fanworks and remixes are part of a global culture, 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. 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.