Hi there, tumblr! Have a hot take:Â Zeta was Best Prime!
Okay, now that I have your attention (and your ire, no doubt), let’s take it from the start.
My name is Alkistis Dalkavouki (just call me “Al” for short), and I am an undergraduate in a Master’s program in the National Technical University of Athens. While the program focuses mostly on architecture, urban and regional planning, right now my thesis has a more geographic topic: the cultural and geographic background of (American) comics creators and the parallel expansion of their fandom.
But you know what? Forget all about that boring stuff and let’s talk robots: in the summer of 2016, I picked up a little comic book you might have heard of called “More Than Meets the Eye”. It took me a while, but I feel in love with it. Like, stay-up-all-night-walking-back-and-forth love, call-your-mom-in-the-morning-crying-about-nonsense love, explain-to-your-dad-how-Megatron-is-an-interesting-dude love. Start-reading-all-the-other-books-in-the-line love, get-to-Animated-and-Prime-and-Marvel-and-Bayformers-and-Beast-Wars love. And finally, convince-your-awesome-supervisor-to-make-a-thesis-on-it-and-its-fandom love.
Because that might sound arrogant and close-minded, but I never expected to love “Transformers” as much as I ended up doing. But why is that? Are there specific parameters that help with getting into a fandom or staying in it? Is this particular fandom a niche, as many people write and think? How does a fandom develop through the years, anyway? How do new people get into it? Is it something about the material, its promotion, or something else entirely?
It was all the above brainstorming that made me decide to inspect the “Transformers” fandom, mainly the one that developed from the recent IDW comics (but not excluding anything else either), as a case study for all the above questions.
But to do that, I need to, you know, get to know actual fans!
I want to reach to “Transformers” fans who are also content creators –those who make fan fiction and art, fan comics, collages/memes, cosplay, kitbash, commentary/reviews, podcasts, animation or anything I can’t even think of right now– and ask them, very briefly, where they come from, when they got into TF and the fandom, what their output is and what makes TF special for them in comparison to other fictions or media. I want to do this through a quick questionnaire I have developed in Google Forms, and if anyone is interested can later participate in a more extensive interview (in a time, platform and format they will decide).
(And yes, I understand that asking for personal information on the Internet is extremely dangerous, but I can assure you that I AM NOT ALLOWED to use the data collected in disrespectful ways. There is an academic code of conduct for this that prevents me from sharing information and breach the privacy of those participating in research in general and interviews in particular. NO personal data is going to be published in the thesis OR papers resulting from it, just used anonymously for statistical and qualitative research purposes (in the form of quotes). Oh, and of course, as long as I’m finished, I will send a copy of the paper to whoever participated in the project in English, to make sure they were not misquoted.)
So, this here blog will be used to help me get in touch and keep in touch with whomever is interested in this project. If you want extra clarifications for the questionaire or the interview process, send an e-mail at [email protected], or to my supervisor, professor Yorgos N. Fotis, at [email protected]. Do not hesitate, really! We’re here to talk about a common passion, so fire away! I’ll start circulating the Google Form when I see some interest (hoping that’s soon)!
Till all are one (oh, the booing, I can hear it from here),
Alkistis “Al” Dalkavouki
