• Fantastic Memes discussed how anime fandom affects Japanese language learning. "In English, we have plenty of loan words from the Japanese language – and, particularly in the English-speaking anime fandom, these words take on different meanings and connotations from how they were originally used. It does have an effect on how anime fans (as opposed to textbook users) approach learning Japanese as a second language."
• Blogger TheBigN discussed transience in anime fandom. "[T]he incoming class of freshmen had what I’d call a sharply divided focus on how they approached anime and fan culture than what I had. While the general format of club activities stayed the same, in choosing shows, their focus was more about shows that entertained...If they didn’t get that, some people would find some other way to get their anime, as this was when fansubs became easily obtainable. And this new group expressed themselves and their fandom more openly, with more participation in some other aspects of culture (from gunpla to cosplay), as well as how they watched anime...But while it wasn’t a sea change, but[sic] the time I graduated college, it definitely felt like my “era” had passed in a way."
• Blogger Andy Piper praised the Nine Worlds convention citing how it was "an inclusive and diverse event – and that is the standout memory of my 3 days at the con. The range of tracks, fandoms and cultures on offer and on display was outstanding and I enjoyed the opportunity to mix with all kinds of folks and make new friends from across all of them." However while the event had an Indie Comics track, manga was not mentioned in the program and there was no programming that focused on anime either, whereas 6 of the 26 different tracks were focused on roleplay or gaming. The OTW was, however, featured in the Fanfiction track where OTW staffer Lucy Pearson presented Owning the Servers: OTW and AO3 in a post-'50 Shades' world.

What anime and manga fandom events do you know of? 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.

• The popularity of Game of Thrones prompted a variety of fan-oriented discussion in the media about its finale. NPR's Talk of the Nation held a discussion on how people deal with unexpected or unhappy story endings. "[P]eople seemed to be not only shocked by what happened...but really angry, and that was what's so fascinating about it. Not just that they were disappointed that, you know, the characters who they had liked would no longer be on the show, they were really angry. And I think that shows just how locked in we are to the kinds of conventions and expectations that we have when we approach a story, even at a time when, you know, we have more stories available to us than at any time in human history. Nevertheless, we feel like it's supposed to go down a certain kind of path." (Transcript available)
• Smithsonian.com discussed the topic with a more research-oriented angle. "The powerful emotional response by fans of Game of Thrones may seem weird to those who are not fans of the show. But we’re here, along with a little bit of help from University of Helsinki researcher Howard Sklar, to tell you that that powerful, visceral, emotional response you had...is totally okay...The key, Sklar argues, is that the way we get to know fictional characters—through little tidbits of information, through watching their actions, through the things we hear about them—isn’t so different from how we come to understand strangers. He says the processes of getting to know a fictional character is much like learning about a real person who lives out in the real world who we’ve only come to know through online interactions or non-fiction writing. From our perspective, sure, we know that one person is real and the other isn’t—but sometimes it doesn’t feel that way."
• At policy.mic, Rajiv Narayan uses Arrested Development to discuss What Fandom And Economics Taught Me About So-So TV. "I think part of what’s missing from my TV-watching experience is a real-time fan community and critic response. What makes some series great has less to do with the show than the conversation surrounding the show. The poster-boy for this argument is Lost, a show that was incredible to watch in its heyday even as it made its viewers put up with spontaneous time-travel, unsolved mysteries, alternate timelines, ecologically-impossible wildlife, and so on...The emergence of straight-to-full-release shows on Netflix like House of Cards and Arrested Development pull the rug out from under a fan base. Even if the shows are great (like the former), the potential enjoyment of their experience is limited from the outset by being all out there. What’s the point of a rabid fan base when you have all the answers? Fan communities that once guess at reveals now police spoiler alerts."
• Molly Templeton at Salon returns to Game of Thrones, ostensibly to pitch fanfic as a balm, post-finale, but also to recognize that fanfiction communities are about more than fic. "I searched Tumblr tags, skimmed LiveJournal communities, and searched fanfiction.net and AO3 for fanfic that disproved the common assumptions about it — that it’s bad, or all porn, or a waste of time for everyone involved. Here’s what I found. Stumbling into fanfic without a guide will make you feel like a tourist." Browsing archives leads to the discovery that "[f]anfic is an immersive, collaborative world, and to be just a reader of it is to miss a lot of what makes it tick: writers taking prompts, writing stories for friends, beta-reading each others’ work, inspiring and being inspired by the stories that might sprawl across fandoms. It’s unexpectedly lonely being just a reader when it’s so clear how much action is going on behind the scenes."

What fandom discussions have you seen taking over the media? 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.

• The Massachusetts Museum of Contemporary Art opened a new exhibit last month called Love to Love You which "gathers art work that takes fan culture as a cue to examine not only the specifics of how we express affection for people far removed from us, but also what that means beyond the exact relationship between audience and creator." The exhibit focuses primarily on music and sports fandoms. "Elissa Goldstone creates objects where there is some resemblance to merchandise or objects that circulate in fan culture, but because of the handmade quality of it, it really has very emotive aspects. It also has a performative aspect, because she sits and watches games and keeps scorecards and then embroiders them, so it's fan identity as performance that then gets transferred to an object."
• While stories such as a fan's walk-on role in "The Office" finale tend to get press for linking fans to creators, places such as The Keysmash blog have been celebrating fandom stories for their personal aspects. In one post a mother realized that fandom could be her community in many ways. "Folks were open and welcoming. I met other women with special needs children and we could talk out our problems and delight in our kids. I met women who had battled depression and anxiety too and I learned from them. I met writers who encouraged me to follow my passion for it. I met women who were not afraid to write and talk about kinks. I met artists who just blew my mind with their talent and creativity. I met runners and fitness gurus who helped me run two 5Ks...I met people from all over the world with different lives and different experiences and different knowledge and I basked in it and shared what I could with them...I am the healthiest I have ever been in mind, body, and spirit and it is all because a prince and a sorcerer couldn’t stop eye-fucking each other."
• The SplitSider focused on fandom's effects on a larger scale by discussing The Arrested Development Documentary Project just as Netflix resurrected the series. The film "flips between interviews with...creator Mitch Hurwitz, seven of the nine regulars, and the show’s producers- and thoughts from die-hard fans of the show. Featuring interviews with passionate Arrested Development fans is a great idea. After all, it's the fans that kept the show alive, making it the cult hit it is today. Unfortunately, this technique doesn’t entirely work. For one thing, the fans [are] never identified—it’s a string of anonymous faces and a brief cameo from Keith Olbermann. And all the enthusiasm in the world doesn’t necessarily make someone an eloquent orator, able to clearly articulate the brilliance of the series."
• Fan eloquence can shine in individual posts, however, utilizing more than just words. One post among the Month of Meta's offerings on Dreamwidth discusses fan expression on Tumblr and why "feels" have come to be. "The term is, far from being a corruption of the language, an elegantly precise word that serves a very useful function. So next time you feel reluctant to say something 'hit you right in the feels' or to cry out 'ow, my feels!' embrace your inner fan, let go of your inner grammarian, and go for it!"

What tributes to fandom have struck a chord with you? 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.

• Journalists and bloggers who have come across only a few works about fandom have a tendency to make broad claims about those documents. Case in point, Irish Times writer Brian Boyd who says that the new fandom documentary Springsteen and I is "the first feature of its type to de-stigmatise fandom and celebrate it as a meaningful and healthy form of behaviour." However, fandom studies are going on continuously, as Canada's Metro notes in a recent feature on a graduate student who is researching female fans of Saskatchewan Roughriders. Not all examinations of fandom need to be a form of defense, either, since negative behavior can itself be informative to either fans or their culture at large.
• For example, The Daily Dot put a spotlight on anti-fandom spaces: "The Tumblr Your Fave is Problematic (YFIP) has one purpose: making sure you have a list of all the uncool things—read: racist, homophobic, sexist, ableist, sizeist, transphobic—your favorite celebrity has allegedly done or said. Normally it flies under the fandom radar, serving its intended purpose as a resource for people looking for the other side of the endless waves of praise that fandom can bestow on its chosen heroes." The purposes behind it are varied. "[I]n an increasingly diverse, increasingly mainstreamed fandom, the number of cultural and political clashes is increasing all the time" and "The distinction between fan and critic, advocate and antagonist is widening but blurring with every baited reblog. And as anti-fandoms continue to grow along with fandom itself, it seems to be a divide that won’t be shrinking any time soon."
• The Washington Post used sports fandom to discuss fans' monetary tributes to their favorite fannish objects. "[P]rompted by a question from his own fiancee — he’s actually thought a lot about why he felt so compelled to buy the quarterback an inexpensive gift from his registry, even though he still hasn’t bought wedding gifts for some of his closest personal friends." The fan replied that “'It’s no one else’s decision whether I buy a cake pan for a guy I’m never going to meet. And so what if he’s got 15 of them? I’m now a part of his cabinet. A little piece of me is part of that cake pan in his cabinet. It’s less about Robert than it is about the fans. We want to be a part of his life, just the same way he’s a part of ours.'”
• On the other end of the scale Seoul Beats wrote about how some fans are deliberately disconnected from the sources of their fandom and points of fan congregation. "There does indeed seem to be a very large disconnect between the purported global aims of Hallyu, the Korean Wave, and the way that international K-pop fans are treated within K-pop fandoms. Specifically, despite the fact that K-pop companies are (and for the past few years, have been) essentially falling all over themselves to attract more interest from the farthest corners of the globe, when it comes to official K-pop fandom, international fans are, for the most part, just plain unwelcome and need not apply." The article examines discrimination in fan club memberships which affect the experiences fans can have as well as how the visibility of non-Korean fans can be limited.

What interesting examinations of fandom have you come across? 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.