#the fandom fandom

[thatscribblingrat]

i made something entirely for fun and i enjoyed every second!! text based rp is probably the hobby i spend the most time on, and i love multifandom rp especially the most. i'd love to do some more in depth zines on the subject, but this one is a silly one, just for funsies.

you can download this zine, including the fun inner page we designed for the print version with actual quotes from our actual rps on Itch.io or Ko-fi ... and support me making good fun art for fun!!!

[peoplecallmelucifer]

Ok I have a stupid idea

Let's srarr a fandom fandom

Instead of shipping characters let's ship fandoms

COD and Battlefeild fandoms? I call that toxic yaoi

Halo is in a slowburn with Dead space

Mass effect? Utter smut with The elder scrolls!

[the-knights-who-say-book]

oh this looks like a FUN article

[the-knights-who-say-book]

i’m reading an academic article about fandom (‘A Crowd at Your Back’: Fantasy Fandom and Small Press by Kim Wilkins) which mentions fan-creators having been called “textual poachers”

and now i wanna write a story about Book Poachers who steal endangered concepts out of books and a group of good guys devoted to stopping them

[the-knights-who-say-book]

i’ve been reading/skimming some academic articles about fandom which you may be interested to check out—these can be found on databases like proquest if you have university or library access:

‘A Crowd at Your Back’: Fantasy Fandom and Small Press by Kim Wilkins, which is more about how fantasy small presses work, what they do, and why they’re successful, but is also about the fandom model of consumers also being creators

‘Except that Joss Whedon is God’: Fannish Attitudes to Statements of Author/ity by Judith Fathallah, which examines the fan-author relationship in terms of how much respect is afforded to authors and why, specifically focusing on support of fanfiction and how sexism plays into the way certain authors are dismissed

Emotional Landscapes of Reading: Fan Fiction in the Context of Contemporary Reading Practices by Natalia Samutina, about approaches to reading fanfic in the Russian Harry Potter fandom—i found the descriptions of a fandom dynamic different from english language fandom really interesting

and there’s so many awesome articles on the open-access Journal of Transformative Works and Cultures, such as:

The JohnLock Conspiracy, Fandom Eschatology, and Longing to Belong by Bo AllesøeChristensen and Thessa Jensen, which examines what the JohnLock Conspiracy was, why it was, and how tumblr’s functionalities shaped it

Discourse Is the New Wank: A Reflection on Linguistic Change in Fandom by Lily Winterwood, a short exploration of how and why old fandom terms became new fandom terms

[the-knights-who-say-book]

In the end, perhaps that is what the old fandom denizens currently on Tumblr are bemoaning when they note the shift from wank to discourse or squick to trigger. This cultural shift to becoming more serious about one's hobby has thrown people who have been in fandom before Strikethrough slightly off-kilter. Ship wars and other fandom wank are now being treated with the same lexicon and seriousness as academic discourse; squicks are given the same amount of weight as psychological triggers in therapy. But perhaps this shift is also indicative of a growing acceptance of fandom as an aspect of cultural and media studies by the mainstream. Fandom itself is becoming more and more acknowledged by mainstream media; the rise of social media has also contributed to a lowering of the boundary between content creators and their fans. With the emergence of fandom out of the fringes of culture, it comes as no surprise that new entrants to fandom will change the existing lexicon. In its current iteration on Tumblr, fandom's shift from wank to discourse and squick to trigger indicates its growing acceptance of critical analysis of media, especially in regards to increasing representation for marginalized populations. I can only speculate on what fandom on a new platform years into the future will change in terms of its lexicon. Perhaps it will follow the advice of the survivors of LiveJournal fandom, and "bring back the squick.

Lily Winterwood, “Discourse is the new wank: A reflection on linguistic change in fandom“

[the-knights-who-say-book]

i love college because i can write a paper going “the tortall fandom is like jewish lesbians, therefore therapy is good” and my professor HAS to read it. captive audience