Here's a roundup of misogyny in fandom stories that might be of interest to fans:

• Theater blog Parabasis had various posts discussing fandom politics and gender last month. The issue was raised by Salon critic Laura Miller in her interview when she noted that female interests such as those expressed in romance fandom tended to be the most reviled. She also contrasted some male fandom groups with female fandom groups such as Game of Thrones fans to Twilight readers. "The people who are Twilight fans...created a kind of female fandom that is profoundly different from the male forms of fandom, which are largely based on that mastery thing where you’re trying to assert control over this uncontrollable experience. The female fans just don’t have that issue. People who are really into Twilight will go onto forums and say, “Oh my God, I’m so into Twilight I haven’t done laundry in ages!” because they’re not battling to be the most, to outdo each other...Willingness to participate, be social, be friendly, interact, that’s what matters."
• The Parabasis posts were the subject of commentary on Metafilter, prompting editor Isaac Butler to single out the way female fandom keeps being "rediscovered" as a form of intentional blindness. However another comment on Metafilter focused on a different article in this issue. "I was not prepared for the article/interview to make an abrupt and alarming course-change into casual misogyny." Citing a conversational exchange between two fans, the commenter notes "There's the dismissal of the output of female fandom as "saccharine, emotional garbage"...there's the explanation that it's okay to disparage the work of "girls" because at least women aren't so silly, which then implies that young men of course never contribute to silliness or obsessed-with-sexiness fan culture...And what makes me SUPER EXTRA SAD about the whole thing is that Jaime Green is a woman, and Tanner Ringerud is her boyfriend! Which hooks this whole conversation into the much larger pattern of women denigrating the fannish spaces that other women have created for themselves, in order to win points with the more acceptable and mainstream male nerd culture."
• A fanfic guide on Crushable also took exception with criticism of female fanworks and their focus on sexual content. "I first joined fanfiction forums around the age of twelve, so I joke that everything I learned about sex I learned from fic. I’ll say it now—I was that weird kid who tried to understand this intimate act by reading other writers’ adult stories and reworking those details into my own, like someone who turns an object around in her hand until she’s investigated every angle. I learned a lot about the clinical and emotional details of sex through these fics."
• Game reviewer Katie Williams had a rather direct experience with denigration at a game expo. "I would often be asked by the PR rep whether I wanted someone to play my “hands-on” demo for me. During booth tours, I would more often than not be guided towards the Facebook games. Following demonstrations, I was often offered fact sheets just in case I didn’t “understand”. People would regularly take note of the publications listed on my badge and say, “But you don’t really play, right?” I was assumed to be eye candy, the pretty face of a publication whose content was provided by people with actual talent. Every time I protested, the offender would say — as if it were a proven fact — “Well, girls aren’t usually into this stuff, you know.”"

If you're a gamer, Twilight fan, a Game of Thrones fan or create fanworks, 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.

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

• Racialicious posted cosplayer Kendra James' story about race and fandom. "It often feels like a white cosplayer can not only dress as their favorite characters of color but also do so in the most offensive way without comment. But when a non-white cosplayer colors outside the lines in the same way, there’s a risk of getting an awkward look because–instead of seeing the costume–no matter how perfect it might be, others see the color of your skin and you can see the confusion in their eyes: Why is a black girl dressed as Zatanna? Worse are the ones who aren’t confused, but then think they’re being inoffensively clever. "You know there probably weren’t many Black USO Girls in the 1940s, right?" Or, my personal favorite, “Wonder Woman? I thought you would’ve done Nubia."
• The lack of characters of color is also the focus of a post by Learned Fangirl who is concerned that online webseries' are failing to break ground avoided by television for decades. "I still don’t understand why the show – and Lena Dunhman – were singled out for portrayal of a whitewashed New York City. As if we hadn’t already seen it in SATC or Friends or various other network TV shows since TV was invented." The failure of programs to hire writers and showrunners of color accounts for much of this, and "[w]ith the major investors and decision-makers in the online world being just as homogenous as Hollywood, I do wonder if online video will ultimately be much different in terms of providing any exceptional new opportunities for writers, producers and showrunners of color."
• John Seavey at Mighty God King comments on patheticfangirl's ringing Tumblr post about her right to ship whomever she wants regardless of the homophobic reactions of offended males. "We are going to ship loudly and proudly and there’s nothing you can do about it. I suggest you stop complaining and jump on the bandwagon. You might be surprised at how much you enjoy fangirls when you get to know us. We have a sense of humor. We have a sense of fun. We just happen to also have a strong sense of romance and a thing for attractive men." Seavey observes that fandom belongs to everyone in whatever way they wish to celebrate it. "[A]rguing that “this isn’t canon!” or “these characters wouldn’t do that!” is a disingenuous mask that this particular breed of fanboys use to attack fiction that makes them uncomfortable. The same people are probably writing Black Canary/Oracle slash, or at the very least nodding approvingly at it while saying, “Yes, exactly. Good for you for having the courage to show what DC can’t show on the printed page regarding these two characters and their mutual love of kinky bondage games!”
• Geekalitarian reposted Emily Whitten's story of her start in the comics field as the creator of the "Ask Deadpool" fansite. She cites a similar path followed by Gail Simone, "who came to the attention of comics publishers through her website Women in Refrigerators, which critiqued the treatment of female characters in comics, and has since written a weekly column on Comic Book Resources and a lot of great comics about both male and female characters, including well-received stints on the all-female group comic Birds of Prey." Having never planned to go pro, Whitten recommends being fannish first. "I was just having fun with something I enjoy, and expressing a passion for characters and a medium I’ve come to love. As it turns out (I think, and evidence suggests), this is a pretty good way to get started in comics, and the more I think about what I’d like to write in comics, the more ideas I have."

If you're an Avengers fan, a Deadpool fan, or if you cosplay or create videos, 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.

Here's a roundup of stories about women in fandom that might be of interest to fans:

• An urgent call is going out to any female fan artists in the New York City area! The PBS program Off Book did a piece on fan artists on May 2. "The fan art community is one of the most creative and active online. Taking pop culture stories and icons as its starting point, the fan community extends those characters into new adventures, unexpected relationships, bizarre remixes, and even as the source material for beautiful art. Limited only by the imagination of the artist, the fan art world is full of surprises and brilliance." Apparently it is also "limited only" by the gender of the fan artist in the show's eyes, as not a single woman appeared to speak despite some of their fan art being shown. Super-wiki owner missyjack protested the exclusion of female artists on the YouTube post, and received a request from a show representative to gather the names of fans willing to be interviewed. If you're a female fan artist in NYC who would be willing to take part and broaden this representation of fan artists, comment at her blog.
• Also infuriating to many female fans was the representation of female audience members by MovieFone with regards to the new Marvel movie release, The Avengers. More than one female fan protested the representation of women as passive audience members dragged to the film simply to please boyfriends. The Discriminating Fangirl wrote "Instead of writing an intelligent guide to the movies for people who aren’t already fans" the article included "idiotic, sexist stereotypes." She summed up the problem with "Yes, because every girl going to see The Avengers is a giggling twit who’s obsessed with being pretty, watching inane rom coms, and who never got over high school. That’s insulting both to fangirls AND to girls who dig rom coms, because it...downplays womens’ intelligence and their taste in films. If girls like it, it must be fluff." She added that "superhero genre stuff AND romance genre stuff...[are] two interests [that] are not mutually exclusive."
• By comparison the just-completed ROFLcon III, a "State of the Web Union" conference held in Cambridge, Massachussetts, had a panel on Fangirl Culture alongside other panels on internet memes and supercuts ("those densely packed, tightly edited video compilations that usually hone in on an idiosyncratic film or television trope"). The Fangirl panel "brought together several fanfic creators-slash-experts, who discussed the increasingly mainstream visibility of fanfic, as well as the bad rap it sometimes gets — despite the fact that most of us grew up daydreaming ourselves into the lives of our favorite characters." It also spawned a related online article about the origins of vidding.

If you are a female creator of fanworks, you can help correct the media assumption that there are only one or two of you out here. 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.

Here's a roundup of stories about fan fiction that might be of interest to fans:

• In Isn't It All Fanfic? Carljoe Javier (author of And the Geek Shall Inherit the Earth) thinks about fan fiction's place in the study of literature and concludes, "It is not for Fan Fiction to find a way to be elevated to the status of Literature with the capital L. Rather, it’s for us, who write, read, and engage in literature, to realize that all writing is in its essence fan fiction." His presentation was part of a panel discussion on "The Fan Fiction Genre," the recording of which is available online.
• Book editor Jessica Dall also looks at this intersection in I Can’t Believe It’s Not Fanfic where she discusses fanfic that has had its serial numbers filed off. "Often times the authors realize that their stories come from these sources as fanfics of sorts (or at least admit to having been heavily inspired by X work) but still it seems many, many I Can’t Believe It’s Not Fanfics still find their way out into the publishing world – as true fanfics (hopefully) never would - and stumble across acquisitions desks all over."
• However, some of that fan fiction still gets the author published. Digital publishers Say Books decided to publish the original fiction of a Castle fanfic writer that the editor stumbled upon through Twitter. "Fanfic sits at the margins of mainstream creative endeavour, and interrogates established views of what it means to be a writer; the meaning of intellectual property, creativity, originality, ‘ownership’, boundaries, and the nature of ‘public’. Of course, as a publishing person and daughter of an artist, I have an uneasy relationship with how fanfic steps on these well-established fences, but am fascinated too."
• HowItShouldHaveEnded.com's Tina Alexander was interviewed about the site's animated video fanfic. "We launched the website in July of 2005 and making the cartoons was just a hobby for us and a way for Daniel Baxter (the artist/animator) to dabble in some programs and produce something. The response we got encouraged us to make more. To date we've created 60 'How It Should Have Ended' cartoons." They are now partnered with Starz and plan lots more production in 2012. "We have every intention of doing 'Hunger Games' (which is highly requested) even though it makes us really nervous! We also foresee a heavy superhero summer with all the 'Avengers' and 'Batman' action hitting theaters."

If you create cartoons or write fan fiction, 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.