• The Observer ran a long, in-depth piece by Dorian Lynskey about Beatlemania specifically, but also how female music fandoms have ever been thus. The term 'mania' was "first applied to fandom in 1844 when German poet and essayist Heinrich Heine coined the word Lisztomania to describe the 'true madness, unheard of in the annals of furore' that broke out at concerts by the piano virtuoso Franz Liszt. The word had medical resonances and Heine considered various possible causes of the uproar, from the biological to the political, before deciding, prosaically, that it was probably just down to Liszt's exceptional talent, charisma and showmanship."
• Meanwhile author Kameron Hurley complains about the media's erasure of women in My Little Pony fandom. "Here was this fandom that I had to keep hidden for much of my life, because it was 'too girly.' Because talking about it made me feminine, and therefore weak, and I didn’t want to be like any of 'those' girls. Every time I brought it up, dudes made these assumptions about me. They teased me mercilessly...But I carried on, because dammit, pretty rainbow horses made me happy...What I didn’t expect was that this marginalized fandom with tiny cons that drew maybe a few hundred people a year was suddenly going to be legitimized now because now *men* said that they watched the show and collected the ponies."
• The Atlantic Wire cites a visible woman, Kelly Sue DeConnick, and how she's affecting women in comics. "'Having Kelly Sue be such an outspoken, unapologetic feminist is so wonderful. Those are the voices we need in industries like that so, like she said, our daughters (and our gay sons and our trans kids and any of our kids if we're not white) don't have to,' writer Sam Einhorn told me. Einhorn blogs about feminism and the comics industry...'I'm glad Marvel not only has a voice saying 'we can do better' and 'our work isn't done' (and also occasionally 'shut up dude') but that they keep her around and give her books to write.'"
• The Oppidan Press featured PhD student Megan van der Nest's presentation Fandom, Personhood and New Imaginaries "on how fanfiction is used to challenge stereotypes in society." First citing the philosophical theories underpinning her work, the article continues "According to van der Nest, fanfiction provides examples of what relationships under different social norms would be like. 'Fandom is all about alternatives,' she said. 'It is common in fandom to explore the forms that relationships might take in a society where they are not constrained by heteronormative expectations.'"

What work have you seen done focused on female fandoms? Write about it 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.

• In an interview with The Hollywood Reporter, producer Jeff Eastin discussed fanfiction ships and their influence on his work. "White Collar still wins in terms of fan fiction, but I've seen quite a bit of fan fiction directed at Graceland. The Mike-Charlie 'ship seems to be very popular and after that it shifted pretty quickly to Mike and Paige, which was nice to see...I had heard of fan fiction but I never saw the extent that people went to. (Laughs.) Somebody on Twitter sent me a link to some of the better White Collar fan fiction, and once in a while, I'll check it out and see what people are saying. It's really fascinating to me and it's an interesting subculture that arises on a lot of these shows. In my opinion, if you have people who are [taking part], you've made it."
• Britt Julious of WBEZ wrote about engaging in Scandal fandom through Twitter. "According to a 2009 study from the Pew Research Center’s Pew Internet and American Life Project, Twitter users are more likely to be African-American women. As well, according to a report from the New York Times of Nielsen ratings, 'Scandal is the highest rated scripted drama among African-Americans, with 10.1 percent of black households, or an average of 1.8 million viewers, tuning in during the first half of the season.'" Thus while the fandom can be seen among different generations in a household "My timeline explodes with chatter about the show, its characters, the clothing, and the music as it airs."
• Julious also mentions Sleepy Hollow, whose fandom is growing quickly. "For a show that has only been on the air for four weeks—the fifth episode airs tonight—Sleepy Hollow's fan base is loud. That's, at least, what you would assume from the decibel level during the show's New York Comic Con panel." Actor Orlando Jones has been particularly engaged with the fandom, saying during the panel "'Fan art rocks! Who ships Ichabbie?' to rich crowd approval...The importance of shipping to the fan base was confirmed further when the next question came from someone who began, 'So if you’ve been paying attention at all to the Tumblr phenomenon of Sleepy Hollow, Icabbie is a huge deal.'"
• Meanwhile the Harry Potter fandom continues to make news with its lobbying of Warner Brothers. Bustle wrote about the chocolate campaign. "There's always been an oft-spoken of symbiotic relationship between fans and the studios responsible for creating the work those fans love. There's also been an underlying tension. They create the work (or at least bring it to us), yes; but they're also the ones responsible for messing them up. And there are many scenarios that can carry the weight of this tension: The blundering of a book's canon, the mistreatment of a character, the failure of a studio to fully grasp the thematic elements that first made the source material so special, the list goes on and on. Each error can isolate the fan communities huddled around these works, particularly when that bungling of philosophy extends past the films themselves and into the marketing products sold and used in the real world."

What examples have you seen of fandoms making themselves heard? Write about it 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.

• One of the clear signs that fanfiction has arrived is the frequency with which new books and articles come out about it. To some, the fact that there is a considerable amount of academic study on the topic comes as a surprise. "By reading fanfiction, one’s interpretation of the original work (i.e. the canon) is expanded to incorporate new ideas, depending on whether you accept or reject the fanfic author’s vision. This is where we get widely accepted theories of fanon from. What this then leads to is a 'flattening', so to speak, of the original source. As fanfic culture flourishes, the consumer’s interpretation of an anime becomes much more deeply personal. This effectively breaks down the barriers that generally arise when we go from interpreting a text to actively taking it in as a creative influence."
• While quite a few documentaries about fandom have been created, fewer focus on fanworks. Thus Slash is of particular interest. "Fan fiction writers, and especially so the writers of slash fiction, need to be confronted on their own terms. There's a low-fi quality at work here. Something very cobbled together, and in a strange way, dangerous. Dangerous in that sexy way that something can be when you don't quite know where it's coming from or what its intentions are...You will never feel the titillation of the unknown, that tiny tingle of ecstatic fear, when you see a glossy, studio-produced 50 Shades of Gray movie. It will be clean and polished and filled with pretty people who blush appropriately anytime the conversation goes south of the anatomical equator."
• Morgan Davies' post on The Toast is briefer but also attempts to examine the history of slash. "As many other people have pointed out before, slash is much more about women and female sexuality than it is about men or male sexuality, for all that the characters on the page (or, well, screen) are male, and in possession of biologically male genitalia. As my friend Caitlin wrote in a Tumblr post on the subject, 'any understanding that slash is only meant to or required to depict real world relationships is a false understanding of what slash is.'"
• The relevance of fanfiction to other parts of people's lives is also becoming a point of discussion. Ethan McCarthy does so in Patheos, suggesting that non-fans should consider where meaning comes from. "Readers are taking a more active role in determining a work’s meaning through interpretation. This broader cultural context can help us understand why fan fiction has taken off the way that it has. In fan fiction, meaning has less and less to do with the 'original' story, and more and more to do with the subjectivity of the fan’s imagination. The original story is left at the mercy of the fan’s own assumptions, interests, and yes, sometimes perversions. While the reader’s role in interpretation is important and shouldn’t be undervalued, the Christian doctrine of creation teaches us that meaning does finally inhere in the creator’s intentions."

What sort of consideration do you see fanfiction getting? Write about it 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.

• Public Knowledge announced its inaugural artist-in-residence, Elisa Kreisinger. She is currently soliciting contributors to her project Fair User(s) which asks "If you know of someone who has experienced any removal or disabling of content due to copyright please direct them to this survey."
• Copyright attorney Timothy B. McCormack wrote about a recent lawsuit against the show Heroes of Cos-Play. "Cos-play costumes are derivative works because they are recasting the work their costume is based on into a new medium while still representing the original work of authorship. In some cases they might also be 'exact copies' 'strikingly similar' copies or 'substantially similar' copies. This means anyone who makes a costume based on an original work is required to obtain a copyright license from the owner if they do not want to commit copyright infringement. As a practical matter, however, it is unlikely cos-players will be sued unless they are trying to use their infringing costume to make a profit. The recent lawsuits involving NBC and the show 'Heroes of "Cos-Play,"' however, might beg to differ."
• While most people think of rights holders as those who control creative works, one set of cosplayers ran into legal problems with a commercial carpet company. "Apparently the carpet costumes were so popular that one of the original cosplayers offered a version of the Marriott carpet pattern for the presumably vast number of people who also wanted to dress up in carpet-themed camo gear. Seeing this, carpet designers Couristan Inc. sent cosplay suppliers Volpin Props a Cease & Desist letter."
• The proposed efforts in the U.K. to restrict online access to porn received worldwide attention, but less of it was paid to protests raised by users. At least one of them expressed fandom concerns about the legislation. "Another activist, Jess Palmer, was cheered by members after saying a pornography filter would have prevented her from discovering fan fiction with some adult themes and finding out about asexuality. Julian Huppert, MP for Cambridge, successfully asked for the motion to be 'referred back' to the party's policy committee for a rethink. He said there are some problems with children accessing internet pornography but this is not the solution."
• Author Misha Burnett talked about aspects of fanfiction and their legal implications. "Genres are largely influenced by a particular work. One could make the case that Mickey Spillane’s Mike Hammer was Phillip Marlowe fan fiction. As Charles points out, J R R Tolkien’s Lord Of The Rings series has inspired the entire genre of Epic Fantasy." He also cites the many fiction and non-fiction works he has drawn on for his stories. "I don’t think that any author can be entirely free of the influence of other authors–what we read becomes a part of the experience that we draw upon to create our own work. The extent to which we are influenced by any one particular work is a matter of personal taste, however."

What legal discussions have you seen pertaining to fandom? Write about them 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.