#fan studies

[popgun76]

Hi! Long time no see

Transformers: Generation Mechs, my 500-page all-new work detailing the rise and fall of G1 and, more importantly, the evolution of the TF fanbase, is now shipping worldwide.

This deluxe limited edition hardback - the debut release from Empurata Books - is available for a short time only: once it’s sold out, that’s it.

I was one of those now-ancient “first fans”. I witnessed what we all assumed at the time was Transformers’ permanent demise and, like other likeminded souls, resolved to keep it alive. That meant fanfic, fanart and, of course, fanzines.

I’ve interviewed over 50 people - Hasbro executives, comic pros, zine editors and more - to bring you the definite history of 80s and 90s fandom, analogue and digital. More than that, I’ve exhaustively documented the genesis of the brand, its incredible mid-80s high point, and its gradual commercial (if not creative) decline.

The book covers everything: the rise of media fandom, the deregulated 1980s entertainment industry, gender studies, contested brand synergy, fan civil war, Trukk Not Munky and much more besides.

If you’ve ever emailed me about my TF books you should by now have received an email telling you how to order Gen Mechs. (If you can’t find it, check your spam.) Everyone else should email [email protected] for ordering and pricing info.

Thanks for your patience and I hope you enjoy the book. Oh yeah - please share this far and wide x

[fansplaining]

Good Omens’ Final Love Letter to Fanfiction

The author is dead. Long live the authors.

Our latest piece is live! The great @annejamison (who you might know as the author of Fic: Why Fanfiction is Taking Over the World) writes about the recent Good Omens finale as a sort of metatextual gesture to fans—and especially fanfiction:

And so, May 13th found me awake at 1 A.M., watching the series finale through bleary and teary eyes. Despite widespread sorrow at the glittering yet gutting conclusion for our heroes, 6,000+–year-old angel and demon Aziraphale and Crowley, I thought it was the most heartfelt and validating love letter to fanfiction I’ve seen come out of a commercial enterprise. Unfortunately, this message got tangled up with the show’s other unique ambitions: to save itself from its author—not Pratchett, the other one—and restore the Good Omens legacy to its fans.

Click through to read the piece or listen to an audio version! 💞

[dicklessthewonderclown]

We know that AI in fandom is a problem, and we know what the problem is, but there is a deeper, more fundamental question that is rarely raised in these conversations. Why does the problem of AI usage in fandom exist in the first place?

I don’t think that AI itself is the inherent issue at stake. Rather, I believe that it is the result of a fundamental shift in the way that fanfiction is viewed by a subsection of fandom.

Fandom, at its core, is about community, specifically a community formed around a shared love of media. Fanworks, an extension of that community, are born out of a love for both media and creativity. Like with any other art form, fans create fanworks not only because they enjoy the original media source, but also because they enjoy the creative process. Fanworks are labors of love.

At least, they’re supposed to be.

But a growing number of people in fandom are starting to see—and subsequently treat—them differently. Fanfiction is no longer viewed like the gift of love and creation from an author to the fandom that it is. Instead, people view and treat fanfiction exclusively like a product not only to consume, but a product that they are entitled to consume.

read more ⬇️⬇️⬇️

the ai fanfiction problem

why does it exist in the first place?

[power-chords]

Music lovers of the mid-nineteenth century were young, middle class, white men and women, often newly arrived in American cities, who, for the first time in history, focused more on hearing public concerts than on making music themselves at home. For many Americans in antebellum cities, the chance to hear professionally performed music simply for the price of a ticket was astonishing, wiping away the necessity of having to learn an instrument, find sheet music, and practice. Indulging in its convenience was the mark of someone fully participating in the sophisticated culture of the city. But music lovers imbued their participation in this enterprise with unexpected enthusiasm. They did not just attend concerts; they depleted their savings to do so every night; they described their feelings about what they heard in diaries, and they waited, longingly, for their favorite performers to return so that listeners could hear those performers again and again.

Take Walt Whitman, who, as one of the earliest music lovers, developed a fascination with concerts while a journalist in New York City in the mid-1840s: on the “free list” for concerts, he was able to hear most of the major virtuoso performers who passed through the city in the late 1840s and early 1850s and would frequently rhapsodize about his favorite opera singers. Although Whitman never had any formal musical training and never learned to play an instrument, music affected him with such force that he described his listening experiences in poems, journal entries, and reminiscences throughout his entire life.

[...] As the concert business grew in the 1850s, spectacle became one means of competition between promoters, especially in the form of the “monster” concert format that, at its extreme, put literally thousands of performers onstage at the same time and necessitated the building of huge, temporary performance halls, the size of several contemporary football fields to accommodate such ambitions. The novelty of these performances for most people was the overwhelming physical experience—a kind of sonic rush of instruments, crowds, and applause.

For music lovers, though, sensation was not a novelty but rather a desired ideal for all performance experiences, whether in a temporary coliseum or a “lecture room” at a dime museum. Music lovers were attuned to the power and quality of performed sound at a visceral, almost intuitive level. Voices had to “strike” or “move” them to be important. In response to opera, especially, music lovers often expressed an overwhelming visceral ecstasy, with music “filling their souls” to the point of losing composure, something that was excitingly dangerous and quite cathartic within the behavioral strictures of middle-class Victorian culture.

—Daniel Cavicchi, “Fandom Before 'Fan': Shaping the History of Enthusiastic Audiences,” Reception: Texts, Readers, Audiences, History, Vol. 6 (2014)

[harbek]

Working on my masters thesis about fanart, doing some preliminary questions to orient myself and maybe discover some interesting topics/themes etc, and formulate better questions. Please do signal boost!!!

PS: "fan creations" can mean any sort of creation. Art, fic, GIFs, crafts, memes, analysis, video edits etc.

PPS: when it says "recognition from creators" in the poll, I mean creators of the ORIGINAL thing your fan of. Like actors in TV shows.

When making/sharing fan creations, do you prefer bigger or smaller fandoms? Why?

Bigger - easier to get notes/likes when there's more fans

Bigger - I get hyped about the big new thing

Bigger - but I like to find a specific niche

Bigger - I get inspired by other people's fandom work

Bigger - other reason

Smaller - I can contribute without being overshadowed

Smaller - easier to get recognition from creators

Smaller - feels more personal

Smaller - easier to get notes/likes when people are starved for content

Smaller - loyalist to a dead fandom that used to be big!

Smaller - other reason

Nuance/I'm bald/depends what I'm into/not a creator/elaborate in comment or tags

Voting ended onSep 3, 2025

PPPS: if you have THOUGHTS™️, please talk to me!

I'm also super interested in ppl who have tried both? And the drawbacks!! Did you find it discouraging when almost no one cared cause the fandom was too small? Did you create something popular just for notes but it felt soulless? How does your skill level factor in? Does it feel pointless when already so much exists in a big fandom, or so you feel unworthy??

I have so many questions, this is why I'm writing a thesis.............

[fanhackers]

Something blue

Yet Tumblr was also a deeply flawed “blue hellscape” to many of its users, a technologically frustrating, often unsafe platform that did not always serve all its users well. As our authors testify, its most vulnerable groups faced the same challenges on Tumblr as they did in real life. Nonetheless, these sub- cultures persisted on the platform because it offered participants the best option and tools for alternative networking among very limited choices. Tumblr was, for many, a deinstitutionalized, underfunded, unauthorized, constantly on-­ the-­ run think tank–­ cum–­ chocolate factory, a subcultural, countercultural place where alternative pleasures, education and resource-sharing, creative and critical work happened. During its first decade, Tumblr became the space for the development of, for example, Black feminist theory, LGBTQ+/nonbinary identity formation, disability and chronic pain collectivities, critical media culture, and alternative body erotics and porn. The increasing calls for social justice that marked the 2010s, especially among young people, prompted The New York Times in 2014 to acknowledge the platform’s youth subcultures as heralding “the age of Tumblr activism.” Given Tumblr’s uniqueness as a platform and the ephemerality of the internet, we began this book in early 2016 with the goal of representing and preserving evidence of Tumblr’s creative forms and critical voices, and we structured this book accordingly. The experience of Tumblr is the experience of multiplicity. Our intention has always been to make this volume as poly-vocal as possible, which means we have included a wide variety of voices, some of which clash with each other, in an attempt to mirror the experience of encountering the variety of perspectives on Tumblr.  –“You Must Be New Here: An Introduction” (2020), by  Allison McCracken, Alexander Cho, Louisa Stein, and Indira Neill Hoc, from a tumblr book: platform and cultures

[ao3demographicssurvey2024]

Over the next few months, I will be working on the final major phase of the AO3 Demographics Survey 2024 project. The aim of this phase is to publish as much of the survey data as reasonably possible so that it is available to future researchers.

In order to do this ethically, this requires anonymising the data set. Since I am not a specialist in this, I would like to ask that if you have particular knowledge or expertise on the best practises here, please get in touch with me to discuss. If someone you know is an expert, please consider sending this post their way!

The best way to get involved is to join the project discord server: https://discord.gg/aAfmPVS9

However if you do not use discord or prefer not to join the server, I am happy to discuss the topic via Tumblr messages to this blog.

Thank you for your ongoing support!