• The San Francisco Examiner reported on gay fans' annual Buffy celebrations. "It was the geeky gay holiday party of the year. 'Gay men love the show because it shows strength in places that don't follow stereotypical societal or heterosexual norms,' Byrd said. 'When getting to know people, I typically out myself as a die-hard 'Buffy' fan. Rarely has a gay person not seen at least one episode of the show.' The article quotes media and religion scholar Anthony R. Mills who suggests "'Real-life practices like attending conventions and screenings create important social interactions; the continuous re-watching of episodes, both communal and individual, functions as religious ritual.'"
• Blogger Sean Kleefeld observed the similar behavior of television and comics fans. "It's not uncommon now for not only fans to get together to watch in groups, but there are even bars and restaurants that host Scandal viewing parties. Comics, by contrast, have long been seen as a solitary pursuit. After all, part of the nature of reading is that the individual is free to take in the narrative at their own pace." However the viewing behavior of fans was different from casual TV viewers. "Taking in the story is, despite the pacing being at the discretion of someone other than the reader her/himself, an intensely personal experience. Even if everyone in the room is sharing that same experience. It would be like you and all your friends reading a copy of the same comic at the same time -- you're all seeing the same story, albeit with slightly different pacing, but the reading experience is very personal. It's only after you all finish that you can socialize your thoughts and feelings about it."
• The Daily Dot looked at examples of fannish tagging on AO3. "[W]hen you take a stroll through its 'freeform' tags, the tags that aren’t about categorization and are all about having fun, you meet with a repository of creativity formed somewhere between 'shameless self-gratification' and 'ideas that sounded great when I was high.' Thankfully, the Twitter account @TagsofAO3 is here to catalog the best of the best."
• The Atlantic discussed How Fanzines Helped Put Doctor Who Fans in Charge of Doctor Who. "Who offers an case study in the way that modern fandom has evolved. The fanzines where Capaldi and others got their start may have seen their numbers decline over the years, but their DNA is all over the modern fandom in a way that distinguishes it from other sci-fi fanzine communities like that of Star Trek. Doctor Who fanzines not only helped keep the fandom alive during its hiatus, they've been a long-standing venue for fans to debate and police the limits of the Doctor Who universe—and these debates have had a direct and noticeable influence on the show itself."

What fannish practices have you noticed? 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.

• Tech developers are taking note of people's interest in using all sorts of platforms for storytelling. AuthorBee is targeting those using Twitter clients (or AuthorBee's own web interface) "to create, co-create and curate rich, long-form stories with their followers." Targeting both professionals and amateurs the company states "'A story can really be anything...it can be breaking news, fan fiction or poetry. It can also be a travel log, a Haiku, a hip-hop song or a chocolate chip cookie recipe. What matters is the common interest or passion shared by the contributors.'"
• Kik, on the other hand, took note of its existing users and decided to market to them. Digiday reported "Behold, the power of boyband fans": "'Kik mentioned that "One Direction" was one of the most discussed things on the app, so we brought that opportunity to Sony Music,' said Eytan Oren, director of partnerships at the IPG Media Lab." Noting that marketers need to pay attention to who is using what and how, another IPG spokesman said "You can’t be a professional and ignore where emerging channels are focused."
• The New Republic explored the effect Netflix is having on television and the lifespan of entertainment products, concluding that it is following a fandom model. "When you meet someone with the same particular passions and sensibility, the sense of connection can be profound. Smaller communities of fans, forged from shared perspectives, offer a more genuine sense of belonging than a national identity born of geographical happenstance. Whether a future based fundamentally on fandom is superior in any objective sense is impossible to say...Certainly, a culture where niche supplants mass hews closer to the original vision of the Americas, of a new continent truly open to whatever diverse and eccentric groups showed up."

How have you seen technology affecting fandom? 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.

Happy New Year! Welcome to our Events Calendar roundup for the month of January! The Events Calendar can be found on the OTW website

The Events Calendar is here to inform and connect fans about upcoming fan events both face to face and online! We are always open to submissions by anyone with news of an event. Events come in many categories such as Academic Events, Fan Gatherings, Legal Events, OTW Events, Announcements of fanwork fests and challenges, or Technology Events taking place around the world and online. New ideas and categories are encouraged! If you know about any upcoming fan events please let us know!

• Space City Con is an all-ages festival of comics, sci-fi, fantasy, gaming, literature, and art! Envisioned as a "geek festival with free parking," their goal is to put on the best convention possible for current generations of fans, and instill a love of comics, Sci-fi and fantasy in the next generation. In their 2nd Annual Gathering Space City Con is offering a robust mix of authors, artists, comics, sci-fi, fantasy, anime, gaming, costuming, fan group networking, literature, writing workshops and more, in a venue meant to be more approachable to families and children. Space City Con will take place January 3-5 in Galveston, Texas
• MarsCon2014 is a multifandom, multimedia convention in Williamsburg, Virginia, USA from 17 to 19 January. MarsCon features a wide range of programming including panels, workshops, movie screenings, music and comedic entertainment, gaming spaces, an art room, and more. The convention also offers a family programming track

  More about MarsCon on Fanlore

• Arisia 2014, New England's largest and most diverse science fiction and fantasy convention, will be held from 17 to 20 January at the Westin Boston Waterfront in Boston, Massachusetts. The 2014 theme will be cross-culturalism. The event features panels on a wide all aspects of science fiction and fantasy literature and media, an art show, a masquerade, gaming spaces, musical guests, a film festival and much more. Arisia may hit our membership cap this year. Pre-registration is strongly recommended.

  More about Arisia on Fanlore

We have 3 calls for papers for January.

• CFP: Fifth International Graphic Novel and Comics conference. The theme of this conference incorporates comics production as part of but also outside of institution. Comics are unique in the mass media because the individuals who produce and distribute the products are usually fans: from creators to comics shops owners and comicon organizers. Papers are enocouraged on all aspects of production: from the multinationals and media conglomerations to small scale production such as fanzines and independent presses. Related aspects of the industry are also of interest, for instance censorship and copyright issues, promotional practices (comicons, comics distribution, historical practices eg: the change in distribution from newsagents to comics shops to collecting and comics promotion). It also has long been argued that comics are a medium with the potential for anarchy, whose narratives often push against cultural boundaries and whose graphic nature can render them a target for moral panics and political objections. Although the exhibition will clearly concentrate on the collections of British-published comics held in the library, contributions in this section which deal with these themes across any national culture or period are welcome. Proposals for specific panel topics are also needed.

  Send a 300 word abstract to: d.huxley at mmu.ac.uk and j.ormrod at mmu.ac.uk by 17th January 2014

• CFP: The Politics and Law of Doctor Who - Politics, law and constitutional questions often feature prominently in Doctor Who stories, whether in the form of the Time Lords’ guardianship of the universe, the Doctor’s encounters with British Prime Ministers, or the array of governance arrangements in Dalek society. Abstracts should be 250 words in length, and should be accompanied by a 100-word biography of the author. Deadline for receipt of abstracts 17 January 2014.

  More about Doctor Who on Fanlore

• CPF: 'Fandom, Brands and Public Relations'- The goal of this project is to bring scholarly attention to the disciplines' interaction, engagement, and interaction with fans who are publics. The purpose of this special issue is to integrate stakeholder and publics theories with those of participatory cultures and media studies/fan perspectives. Submission deadline: 1st February

The OTW encourages anyone to submit an event that's not already listed, and to check out the events calendar throughout the year!

• While it's generally known that fandom is a major part of life on Tumblr, several researchers from Canada's Simon Fraser University will be presenting the results of their fandom study at the Computer Supported Cooperative Work and Social Computing conference in February 2014. Their paper is already available. "We investigated Tumblr fandom users’ motivations behind participating in fandoms, and how they interacted within the Tumblr community. Our results show that fandom users feel their Tumblr experience is ‘always-on’ where they participate at nearly any point in the day. They have also adopted a unique set of jargon and use of animated GIFs to match their desired fandom activities."
• RocketNews24 discussed how Vocaloid fandom has become a milepost for distinguishing otaku generations. "The real rise in Vocaloid’s popularity began in 2007 with the introduction of Hatsune Miku, though the software existed years before. Songs like Melt and The Disappearance of Hatsune Miku led to the character, Miku, becoming the axis of Vocaloid fandom, and people first falling into the series for more than just its capabilities as music-making software adopted the perspective that Hatsune Miku and Vocaloid are synonymous. According to Febri’s article, these people belong to the first generation of Vocaloid fans."
• On Grantland, Molly Lambert uses the Brony fandom revealed in its documentary to discuss adopted personas. "Defining yourself by the media you consume has always been commonplace, but it took social media to really demonstrate how inadequate it feels to reduce your personality into a series of lists. The ownership we feel over our favorite things is false, and Friendster, MySpace, and Facebook really served to drive this home. You like The Big Lebowski? Cool, so does everyone. The things you thought made you unique when you were the only person you knew interested in some genre of music, independent film, or corner of history turn out to be laughably banal. Even personality traits are memes, picked up and transmitted or willed into place."

What stories of fandoms developing do you have to share? 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.