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

• As awareness of fandoms and the fandom market grows in the commercial sector, the media has followed suit, offering posts that "explain fandom" to their users. In some cases the financial motivation is obvious, such as this CNBC article informing the public that Bieber is passe while Kpop may be the new cash cow. In others, the fan practices are explored as a form of community reporting, looking at those activities in isolation.
• More thoughtful discussions are rarer but exist, such as this patient exploration of fanfic in the Wall Street Journal which explains fanfic to a reader who apparently missed its recent three pronged feature on the topic. The Kansas City Star included commentary from the OTW's Francesca Coppa in its fanfic discussion, who summed things up nicely by saying "“We may have momentarily forgotten that this is how literature works, people telling stories over and over again and changing them,” Coppa said. “Fan fiction is where non-commercial storytelling lives.”"
• But the mass media isn't the only source of fandom explanations. There's always a more academic approach, such as this look at Olympic memes or the IDEA Channel's latest fanworks segment looking at fanfic activity through history. And nowadays there are entire academic courses to explain fanworks, such as the one at Yale which has students "writing their own fan fiction and analysing existing fan fiction."
• Then there are the introductions done on a more fan-to-fan level such as this introduction to Korean dramas on The Learned Fangirl, or this Q&A with a maker of fan films. Indeed, introductions and explanations can be a part of overall fannish discourse such as this series on fan practices.

If you've got your own fandom explanations to share, why not share them on 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.

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

• Blogger Suzanne Lahna wrote recently about things she's learned from fandom. Concluding that "Fandom is important, and I think the why needs to be told," she lists a few benefits from the immediately practical to the lifelong. "Fandom taught me how to make a fight scene work like a fluid thing. Fandom taught me that present tense is actually okay, and can be used well in the appropriate scenarios...Fandom taught me how to write boldly, without shame, without hesitance." She writes, "Fandom has given me hope. Fandom reminds me that there are no limits to what we can write about, what we can do, only the limits we place on ourselves."
• The Atlantic looks at soccer fans and finds much the same thing as Lahna. "Trying to rationalize fandom can be a complicated, even futile process. But studies by psychologists have shown that identifying yourself with a sports team can have profound implications. According to Daniel L. Wann, a professor at Murray State University, and a pioneer in the field of sports psychology, the more passionate your fandom, the more positive the impact is on your psychological health. Based on surveys of American sports fans over more than two decades, Wann has categorized fans in relation to the degree to which they consider their team an extension of themselves. He describes the more ardent fans, the ones who consider their team to be an important part of their lives, as 'highly identified' fans, and the ones who follow their team more loosely, with a sense of detachment, as "weakly identified" fans. He says, in the case of the highly identified fans, the social connections that are formed through their fandom—the camaraderie that comes out of following games with a group of people—plays a significant and positive role in their lives."
• A piece on sci-fi cons in The Seattle Times came across the same opinions yet again: "'It's a community,' Katrina Marier, editor of Westwind, the magazine of the Northwest Science Fiction Society, said. 'People in fandom care about each other. We're excited to get together.' She said when someone gets sick, people visit with casseroles and offers of help just like in any group." Indeed some ideas should spread outside of fandom. "'Some [people] you'll like and some not. Some you'll agree with and some not,' she said. 'You all can occupy the same space for the course of a weekend. That is very important, and we could use a lot more of that in our national discourse.' That's reason enough to be involved. Besides tolerance, Marier says, fandom has solidified some other good traits. 'Fandom has encouraged my tendencies to both be open to new ideas and to think about them critically, and to ask questions.'"
• Indeed a story in The Advocate stresses the ways in which fandoms and society can be intertwined with their feature on a comic book store wedding. Various comics shops honored the marriage of characters Northstar and Kyle with fundraising events and receptions, but Midtown Comics took it a step further when they hosted a wedding in-store. The groomsmen featured in the story "were selected from more than 50 applicants because 'they really stood out as super-fans,' said Thor Parker, Midtown Comics’ social media and events director. They met online and had one of their first dates at a comics-related event."

If you're an X-Men fan or in a comics or sci-fi fandom, or want to share your own story about what fandom has meant to you, 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 at transformativeworks.org. 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 viral fandom stories that might be of interest to fans:

• Sherlock Holmes fans recently got an opportunity to write fic as part of a fundraiser for the former home of Holmes creator Arthur Conan Doyle. There were restrictions however, not only in terms of content but in character use. "While the Sherlock Holmes canon characters are out of copyright, which means they no longer legally belong to anyone, characters not found in the canon but in recent adaptations such as Molly Hooper from BBC 'Sherlock' television series or Lord Blackwood from Guy Richie's 'Sherlock Holmes' movie for example, do belong to the creators of the productions. Unfortunately therefore we can only include original canon characters." Sherlock actor Benedict Cumberbatch had no such restrictions when first reading fanfic through Tumblr. "'I suppose my bodily proportions are quite flattering. I'm ripped, doing something I wouldn't normally do with my body, or having done to it, involving Watson,' he said cheekily. 'So that's as far as I'll hit about that one, but it's all there on the Web if you want to find it. I was amazed at the level of artistry; people have spent hours doing it.'"
• Tumblr was also the location of another fanfic phenomenon, as discussed on The Mary Sue. Starting as a critique of the dichotomy of female representation in fandom discussions, two women were depicted as polar opposites -- meaning they were soon shipped by viewers. "Quickly taking the form of endless shoujo manga tropes, Other-Girl-San/Normal-chan spread like wildfire across Tumblr yesterday, the initial post growing to 25,000 likes and reblogs as Sunglasses & Snowflake (Sunny and Snow) crossed the internet cultural divide, making meta and making out."
• While the speed of such fandom developments is impressive, a post at Robot 6 reminded readers that there was fandom before the internet. Citing the fanon origin story of a character in the 1920s newspaper comic strip Gasoline Alley, blogger Brigid Alverson called it "fan folklore that might have even started with someone’s fan fiction and somehow went viral. It’s a reminder that in their heyday, newspaper strips had the same kind of interactivity as webcomics do now, with readers sending in comments and suggestions via the old-fashioned mail and the creators commenting in articles like this one. It all just moved slower."
• The Internet certainly does make it simpler for fans to publicize local projects however, as in the case of the fangirl calendar developed by a couple in Charleston, South Carolina. "'Being a geek girl, I go to a lot of cons, I read a lot of blogs, I see a lot of geek girl culture things out there,' Laura says. 'And personally I feel that there's not a lot of materials out there that represent that aspect of fandom. Some of the things that exist out there are more related toward geek males, and I don't think they give the best representation of real women, real fandom, the way that real girls celebrate it.'" Some funds from the calendar will be earmarked for the Wayne Foundation, which benefits domestic trafficking victims.

If you're part of an old or new fandom, 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 fanfic that might be of interest to fans:

• Fan fiction has been widely discussed online, but the recent discussions surrounding the highy visible success of Fifty Shades of Grey continues to take that discussion to new places with, unfortunately, new misinformation. One example is an aside in a discussion of changes in publishing that describes fan fiction as "author-approved online 'mash-ups' by fans of cult novels." Another is the suggestion in a Huffington Post interview that fan fiction has only ever been written for sci-fi and fantasy genres. Still as this "concert preview" that focuses on fan fiction written for Def Leppard demonstrates, there are certainly going to be fewer people than ever who have never heard of it.
• That visibility suggests that efforts like Social Samba's "SagaWriter" tool will become increasingly common, though also that fan fiction is going to be less about fans and more about marketing. "One day TV networks might have budgets to hire social TV teams as big as their main writing teams, but for now a show like The Walking Dead could easily make a Saga where you get to talk to your favorite character while trying to avoid getting eaten." The platform allows for interactive storytelling, but not, it would seem, fan originated stories. Explains SocialSamba CEO Aaron Williams, "Within our tool you can’t use copyrighted material. We follow the same DMCA rules that everyone else does. We see TV shows and other storytellers have interest in creating fan fiction. The WB adding Big Lebowski characters to Xtranormal, the fact that they are taking steps like this was a good thing to point to for us. It means its good for the brand. For us we see that wave coming, brands or storytellers can skin to look like their brand and embed in whatever platform they use to reach out to fans."
• Other people are being more thoughtful about the fan fiction that already exists. Wired Magazine contributor Clive Thompson posted ruminations on how fan fiction writers are creating "paracosms", using the Brontë sisters' early writing as an example, and cited evidence that "MacArthur fellows were twice as likely as 'normal' nongeniuses to have" created paracosms as children. Thompson warned though that "we have to stop denigrating it" if society is to reap the rewards of such play.
• Britain's The Guardian in the meantime suggested that authors must value fan work in today's marketplace. "[T]he success of a novel such as Fifty Shades of Grey is far less surprising to anyone who understands the dynamics of fandom than to the mainstream publishing industry...That it was fan-fiction based in Stephenie Meyer's Twilightverse is beside the point. That it was chosen by fans and made successful through their support is far more significant. Because what fans want above all else – what in fact defines the very essence of fandom – is ownership of that which we adore." What's more "The publishers that survive will be the ones that understand that their role is to amplify the signal of those artists already chosen by fandom. The writers who succeed will be the ones who are there day in and day out, as much a part of fandom as any other fan, and on first name terms with the neighbours."

If you'd like to help out people still learning about fan fiction, why not write about it on 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.