• The death of Glee actor Cory Monteith put attention on the show's fanbase. A former social media worker for the show discussed how the fans had won her over. "I spent several hours a day in the company of the gleeks, whose intensely positive outlook was genuinely disarming...The job was part marketing and part customer service, but I also found myself drawn into the role of unofficial counsellor. These were teenagers passionately involved in the lives of onscreen high-schoolers who reflected and played out their own feelings of isolation and confusion. They tweeted incredibly personal things to each other – and to me. Although I was just a disembodied online voice, I was still a sympathetic ear; an almost-real imaginary friend."
• Meanwhile Junkee.com looked at the fanworks that were being produced. "Glee’s fan fiction community was quick to react. Numerous stories appeared on FanFiction.Net overnight, some of them are set within the world of the show, as Finn’s friends and relatives deal with the news of his death, and some are about the actors themselves. Some are maudlin, some are strangely poignant, but together, they offer a fascinating insight into the ways that people process their grief for a beloved character and a person they’ve likely never met."
• In MLB fandom, it was the case of a fan's death and a player's decision to attend the funeral that made the news. "On the day of the memorial service for the love of her life, Meredith Benton wore her black Mets jersey stitched with orange and blue." She was not alone as "[i]n Jim's obituary in the Nashville Tennessean, attendees of the memorial were instructed to wear orange and blue." Mets player R.A. Dickey who lived near the memorial service heard about the death and went to meet the family. "To live a life without being passionate about something, be it a sports team or poetry or art, would be a really hollow life. So to see someone be passionate about something, I respond to that. It's a good thing, and I appreciate it. And there's no doubt he was passionate about baseball, in particular the New York Mets. So I felt a connection to him, even though I had never met him."

What fandom attachments have you seen live on? 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.

• While there have been a number of comedy troupes around the world doing shows based on fanfic readings, they have largely used fanfic written specifically for the shows by the performers themselves. A recent review of Black Swan Comedy in Toronto, a monthly comedy series focusing on fan fiction, made clear that the performers were reading material pulled from online sources instead. "'We find the best/worst fan fiction. We'll read it once to know that it's perfectly bad at the start, and then find out how horrible it is on stage together with the audience,' says Jeremy Woodcock of Rulers of the Universe." There was an aftershow by the Weaker Vessels which was labeled "a Harry Potter fan fic" making it unclear if it was simply a show based on Harry Potter or one which specialized in reading only from that fandom. Apparently the shortcut is doing well for Black Swan Comedy as the readings are a "sold-out event every month."
• A recent story at The Daily Dot on finding community through porn gives only passing mention to written material, which perhaps explains why there is an assumption that such communities are a recent development thanks to the mainstreaming of porn. "The shock value and taboo is dissipating, and the more it does, the more porn appears. But do we understand why the rise of the group mentality in porn? Why porn consumers no longer want to be alone, but rather want to belong—to other like-minded porn consumers, and to make small talk and chat about their interests?" While the article acknowledges that women have their own communities -- "Slate writer Amanda Hess points out that 'Women who engage effectively online can find resources for critically assessing [pornography’s] most sexist tropes, join communities that don’t share those norms, and benefit from a kind of increased sexual mobility they can’t always find in real life'" -- it doesn't explore their history.
• Another Daily Dot story instead focused on deliberate invisibility -- or at least an attempt to maintain a fourth wall. "In the world of theatre, the ‘fourth wall' refers to the invisible wall that divides the characters from the audience. In fanwork-based fandom, the fourth wall refers to the invisible 'wall' of silence, pseudonyms, and covert activity that shields fans from the judgment of the outside world." However, fandoms do not react in unison to outside observation, nor are the outsiders always negative about their discoveries, even when it's about themselves. "This isn't the first time Seguin and his fellow hockey players have found slash about themselves. In July, Toronto Marlies hockey player Jesse Blacker tweeted a link to adorable fanart of himself and Segs, calling it 'awesome.'" Cult film director Duncan Jones was delighted by finding fanfiction of his work. "'Wow! I did not know about this!' responded a delighted Jones. After sharing the link with his Twitter followers, Jones followed it to an AO3 fic with 'lots of robo-feels and some clone hugging.' After reading, he left a thoughtful and flattered review for the author, Wildgoosery."

What fandom invisibility problems have you encountered? What fan collaborations have you taken part in? 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.

The Organization for Transformative Works is celebrating its fifth anniversary! From September 4 to September 6, we're holding trivia and participation contests across our various news outlets, in order to celebrate and publicize the OTW's various projects and organization history.

See our first announcement post for more details on the contest rules, and if you have any questions please post them there.

Post #4: Link us to a pic or post where you tell us what job a character from your favorite fandom might take on if they were part of the OTW.

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

• Writing for the India Business Standard, Rrishi Raote talks about how to design sites in a way that encourages community and thus fandom. Raote complains about too much time and thought spent on design in Pottermore compared to too much delay and an absence of ways to draw people together. "The whole thing is too managed." Instead he suggests that a site that is not an obvious fannish place might yet become one. "Duolingo, it could be argued, is no less complex a website than Pottermore. Yet it was done much faster, the interface is terrific, the learning programmes and audio work well, and there are dozens of useful details for the learner. Most critically, because to learn a language it is not enough to know grammar and vocabulary, one has to use it, Duolingo has a built-in social aspect. You can form groups, see what stage your fellows are at, chat with them in the chosen language, compare your work with theirs, and so on."
• CSICON's James Drew looks at "fan-redesigns", or what most of us would call AUs, of everything in popular culture. "[Aaron Diaz] isn’t the first by any means to take something he loves and build it back from the ground up, and he certainly won’t be the last. In many ways, fan-redesigns are an epidemic. Diaz himself has already drawn up reboots for the JLA and the Bat-Family, but you might also have spotted Annie Wu’s design for a punk rock JLA floating around the internet." The big shops are doing it too, as he cites Marvel and DC's own reboots, competing Sherlock Holmes TV series, and how " most modern franchises run on the power of former fans...but it seems different when nobody’s getting paid to take old characters out for a spin, buy them some clothes, show them the town." Apparently Drew believes that most fans work within canon rather than "discard existing canon and what our friends over at TV Tropes would call the ‘Word of God‘ in favour of something that makes more sense."
• Fans, however, are constantly redesigning how things should work. For example, sports blogger Joshua Allen decided to write his blog as a comic strip. "I had done a previous comic and enjoyed working in that medium. I had also done a Cubs blog in 2010 that was in a more traditional format, but it had no real hook, and no one really read it...Since my time is limited by a new baby, I decided to combine the two urges." And a group of Belgian sports fans decided to sell their fannish passion for charity. "The fans set up a Facebook group - 'Belgian soccer fans for sale for Euro 2012' which has grown to 20,000 members, explaining they needed someone to shout for and would donate any proceedings from a buyer to UNICEF." They found a donor and said they would repeat the sale once the owner's team was eliminated. "[W]e will grieve for 24 hours and then put ourselves for sale again on ebay. Hopefully joined by the previous winner since he or she will also have become an orphaned soccer fan by then."

If you're a sports fan, draw comics or are have opinions about Pottermore, 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.