• 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.

• 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.

• While 'Fangirl' is a much less used term in the media than 'Fanboy', both often come in for a shellacking when they do appear. WhatCulture.com used it when citing 10 Moments That Gave Fanboys A Bad Name. Perhaps, for once, women benefited from being erased since at least half the examples they cited occurred in predominantly female fandom circles.
• VentureBeat meanwhile argued that 'Fanboy' is an overused term. " I realize that no one can simply grab the Internet by the shoulders and ask it to stop crying “fanboy!” every time someone shows their enthusiasm for something. But that’s not what this article is about. The point I’m trying to make by writing this is that a person’s point of view may not be clear over the Internet and that during a discussion, the gaming community should make an attempt to understand where the other side is coming from."
• Meanwhile Apex Magazine argued that 'Fangirl' isn't a dirty word. "We’re battling decades of institutionalized sexism, racism, and imperialism. We’re working on it. We may still be struggling with all of the —isms but we’re clawing our way toward second wave fandom, particularly when it comes to female fans sharing the dais. We recognize that women really do game, read comics and geek out over all the things guys geek out over. But even in this enlightened age, the gendered term 'fangirl' has become a casual slur, used with impunity to mock and ridicule a certain type of fan."
• It's certainly not difficult to spot troubling issues that fans face -- whether it's receiving offers to turn pro in all the wrong ways, finding a hostile environment for female professionals and fans alike at conventions, being exposed to demeaning reactions to one's appearance when posting YouTube content, having one's fannish endeavors misrepresented to a general audience or having only certain kinds of fanworks appear in the spotlight. But labels can be an enduring problem, especially when they're misused.

How do you see fanboys or fangirls talked about? 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.