• A post on The MarySue took a more psychological look at the "Fake Geek Girl" syndrome. "The theory of microaggressions was developed back in the 70′s to denote racial stereotyping, but was expanded by psychologist Derald Wing Sue, Ph.D. in 2007 to encompass a wide variety and classifications of these subtle and seemingly harmless expressions that communicate 'hostile, derogatory, or negative slights and insults' toward people who aren’t members of the ingroup. These outgroup members might include women, racial/ethnic minorities, LBGT members, and others historically marginalized in our community." Author Dr. Andrea Letamendi explained the anger such behavior can engender. "The feelings of being threatened, invalidated, and overlooked can happen to any one of us in this community–some psychologists argue that when the threats are ambiguous or subtle (like microaggressions), they can be more damaging because there is no certainty and the assault is denied or ignored."
• More complaints about sexism arose in response to a documentary on Bronie fandom. "What do you get when fans decide to make a documentary about their own fandom? In the case of the Bronies—fans of My Little Pony: Friendship Is Magic—the answer seems to be erasure and exclusion. So say some fandom critics of the recently released documentary Bronies: The Extremely Unexpected Adult Fans of My Little Pony. Not everyone in the Brony fandom is happy about the newly launched documentary. Female fans are already planning their own documentary in response, to give a more inclusive portrayal of fans—particularly the female sector of the Brony population, which many fans claim was virtually ignored."
• Another fan documentary fundraising on Kickstarter will be focusing on the makers of fan films. In a chat with OTW staff, co-producer Joey Rassool discussed the project's focus. "We hope to show several things: 1) Why fan films tend to be more accurate to the source material than their hollywood equivalents, 2) Why even greatly funded fan films still end up with problems, 3) What these creators, especially the ones working out of their own pockets, have to sacrifice to bring their art to life, and 4) What kind of person is willing and capable of making those sacrifices." Asked how he thought a view of fan film makers might map onto the work that other fans do in other mediums, he replied "I find that film is a shockingly tricky art form for fan made content because of the amount of time, energy, people, and finances that have to go into it to generate a final product. But I hope that our film can show everyone that creates fan based content that any amount of effort is worth it for the final result." They also plan to focus on how fans "manage the aspects of filmmaking. Most fan films are made by crews and directors with little to no big budget experience, and the introduction of crowd funding can put a lot of money into some fairly unseasoned hands. This means that things can go wrong at almost any turn."

What examinations of My Little Pony, fangirls or fandoms have caught your attention? Tell us 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.

• After Ellen focused on femslash shipping. "The term femslash can be applied to really any female romantic/sexual pairing between characters, even OTPs, but its original purpose was as a reference to alternative lesbian romances based on subtext. Crackships, which is frankly just fun to say, are pairings that are very unlikely to ever occur. In a nutshell, it comes down to the difference between subtext and pure, fun fantasy."
• Meanwhile Neon Tommy talked about fan relationships when they gather into fandoms. "In spite of the differences, petty feuds, ship wars, emotional turmoil and cyclical upheaval, fandoms exist to fulfill the desire for a community of peers and equals who share similar passions. But like a man, no fandom is an island." Instead they grow, shrink, merge and cross over. "Tenuous connections between families are created—"Firefly" and "The Avengers" are connected through Joss Whedon; actors and writers and directors cross over and expand the fandoms, bringing in new ideas and new points of view. New fans should not be excluded; rather, it should be the opposite. New fans keep the fandom's population up; but also, it prevents stagnation." And always important to keep in mind: "Even if your fandom isn't as well-known or visible as another, it's still fantastic, and, more importantly, it's yours."
• Conversely Leverage actress Gina Bellman wrote in The Guardian about a fandom family from the celebrity side. "By seasons four and five, there was a constant flow of tweets, videos and photos posted from the set, trailers, writers' room, costume fittings and even the catering tent. Nowhere was out of bounds. We would gather in the studio to view the fan videos, made in homage to favourite characters or story lines. Hundreds, maybe even thousands of Leverage fan vids are posted on YouTube, some of them expertly edited little treasures in their own right and receiving up to 40,000 hits...At some point, we started referring to fans by their names and avatars."
• Instead of using the family metaphor, The Atlantic chose religion when discussing sports fandom. "Durkheim, a pioneering sociologist, began digging through accounts of 'primitive' cultures like the Arunta tribe of Australia, hoping to excavate the ancient source of ties that bind. His conclusion—as revealed in The Elementary Forms of the Religious Life—remains as profound and relevant today as it is elegantly simple: Whenever a society (or, here, sports subculture) worships a divine form, it is, in fact, also simultaneously worshipping itself." Fandom objects are totems and "totems, while 'officially' symbolizing deities, also implicitly offer vessels for fellowship; licenses to congregate together." An article released the same day on Deadspin showed how Facebook data could provide an NFL fandom map.

What femslash, OTP, shipping, ship war, or Jossverse story do you have to share? 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.

• Bob Tarantino at JD Supra Law updated a 2010 discussion about fanfic in light of recent developments in Canada. "A discussion of the legal implications of fan fiction would not be complete without mentioning two relevant matters which are not affected by the UGC exception introduced by the CMA: moral rights and trade-mark (or passing off) claims." Although the UGC exception pertains to copyright infringement, it "has no effect on an author's potential moral rights claims. And because fan fiction may make use of elements of an author's creation such as titles, character and location names to which some form of trade-mark protection applies (e.g., Star Wars fan fiction that makes use of character names like Luke Skywaylker (a registered mark in Canada), ...there remains the possibility that some form of trade-mark based action could be commenced by the relevant rights-owner."
• Regardless of what's being discussed in legal circles, fanfic is moving to being both acknowledged and appreciated by perfomers, and seen as a matter worth discussing by the press. A news story on the TCA session for new series The Following began "Shippers, start your engines. Ready your Tumblrs. Start combing the works of Edgar Allen Poe for excellent fan fiction titles." The reason? "FOX’s new drama “The Following,”from “Scream” scribe Kevin Williamson, is a violent, provocative drama about a serial killer and the man hunting him. But, surprisingly, it’s constructed more like a romance." And it contains a canon M-M-F threesome. A reporter "confessed that, having seen the first four episodes of the show, she’s rooting for Hardy and Carroll to kiss. Ever the crowd pleaser, Bacon happily grabbed Purefoy’s face and laid a smooch on him."
• Zakia Uddin wrote in The Society Pages about fanfic role playing on Omegle. "We perform identities on social networks, using filters and images, and timelines, and real-time updates – but those identities are never too far removed from those we perform in real-world frames. Roleplaying on Omegle offers a way of getting closer to other writers’ characters in ways which are paradoxically more personal and more immersed in the author’s creation than ever before. While fans wait for their favourite TV series or book series to start up again, they create narratives in collaboration with others which run parallel to their ‘real’ lives. What happens to the division between the fiction and nonfiction when we can experience being someone entirely different every day, within the frames of social networks like Tumblr and Facebook?"

Do you role play? Will you be watching The Following? 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.

• A piece in the New York Times examined how technology, and those creating it, are censoring the Internet. "The New Yorker found its Facebook page blocked for violating the site’s nudity and sex standards. Its offense: a cartoon of Adam and Eve in the Garden of Eden. Eve’s bared nipples failed Facebook’s decency test. That’s right — a venerable publication that still spells “re-elect” as “reëlect” is less puritan than a Californian start-up that wants to “make the world more open.”" The article cites numerous companies at fault, the most influential being Google. "Until recently, even the word “bisexual” wouldn’t autocomplete at Google." While some cases are a matter of cultural conflict, others show corporate influence. "How do you teach the idea of “fair use” to an algorithm?"
• The Daily Dot looked at just such a problem by investigating how Google's automated search for copyright violations ends up being anything from a nuisance to censorship of people creating or using royalty-free content. "Miller's saga...led him through the depths of EMI Music and Warner/Chappell Music, two labels that showed up as having management rights to the track. But when Miller made the necessary efforts to contact the labels, he learned that neither of the two actually held any rights to the song. In both cases, the two creators lost their ability to pull revenue from the ads that ran on their videos. Instead, those dollars—or pennies, as Mullins articulated—went to the purported rights holders of each composition—something that's not technically fair, if at all ethical—until the channel owner’s able to straighten out the situation. That can sometimes take days, weeks, or in Mullins case with the guitar stringing videos, not happen at all."
• Knowledge at Wharton posted a video interview and transcript with information management professor Shawndra Hill on the topic of Social TV which is "the integration of social media and TV programming" designed to capture fan activity. "There are a number of [successful] social TV applications that have been developed by [several] businesses to allow people to basically show how big a fan they are of different TV shows...So networks in the U.S., at least, have ways for their viewers to interact with one another on the networks' websites and in fact are trying to drive them to their own websites to do just that."

If you have technology or legal stories relating to fandom, why not share 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.