Category: Guest Post

OTW Guest Post

OTW Guest Post: UsedKarma

Sarah Loch

From time to time, the OTW will be hosting guest posts on our OTW News accounts. These guests will be providing an outside perspective on the OTW or aspects of fandom where our projects may have a presence. The posts express each author’s personal views and do not necessarily reflect the views of the OTW or constitute OTW policy. We welcome suggestions from fans for future guest posts, which can be left as a comment here or by contacting us directly.

“Hi! I’m Ophelie, aka Usedkarma on tumblr. I’m french, in my 30’s and I’m deep into a smallish fandom called Darcyland that I helped create in 2012 by opening fuckyeahdarcylewis on tumblr. Since then it keeps growing. I also have a twitter and a deviantart.” Today, Ophelie talks about starting the Darcyland network and the magic of fandom.

How did you first get into fandom and fanworks?

I think I started being into fandom since very young but before internet you kinda felt it didn’t exist, so when I had internet the very first time was when The X-Files was on air (yes, I’m that old). Being French and wanting to read in English for school, I discovered fanfictions (and boy, was that wild). I really started creating both graphics and fanfictions with Buffy, I was a huge Willow Rosenberg fangirl. Then years went by, BtVS went away and I sorta watched Smallville (in fast forward, I wasn’t that in love with the show but it was easier to create my own AU’s of the episodes). I loved the character of Chloe Sullivan, thus I created a French forum about her and wrote fanfictions in french — at the same time I started reading fanfictions in English on NaughtySeduction about Chloe and Lex. It’s not until I matured, started finally realizing that my English level was kinda good that I just decided to create fanarts and writing in English. I read what feels like a ton of fics, all in English and I can’t really imagine my life without fanworks now to be honest. Being surrounded by nice and nurturing people really helps going outside my comfort zone. Sometimes I write drabbles that go with whatever picspam I make.

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OTW Guest Post

OTW Guest Post: Euclase

Sarah Loch 3 Comments

From time to time, the OTW will be hosting guest posts on our OTW News accounts. These guests will be providing an outside perspective on the OTW or aspects of fandom where our projects may have a presence. The posts express each author’s personal views and do not necessarily reflect the views of the OTW or constitute OTW policy. We welcome suggestions from fans for future guest posts, which can be left as a comment here or by contacting us directly.

Elicia Donze, also known as Euclase, is a professional artist and fan creator who has been active in fandom communities since the 90s. She is an outspoken advocate for the creation and protection of fandom safe spaces for female and queer communities and a longtime supporter of fandom culture and derivative works. Today, Elicia talks about her history in fandom, her preferred media, and what she loves about fandom

How did you first get into fandom and fanworks?

Way back in 1998, I made a geocities website about Eowyn from The Lord Of The Rings for a class assignment. A few years later, the movies came out, and a few lovely fan girls saw my site and invited me to join their forum, Parma Eruseen, which was quite a big forum in the day, where I eventually became a moderator and fan fiction and fan art contributor. From there I went to livejournal, then Tumblr, but I’ve been creating fan works since I was a child, and I’ve been sharing them online for about as long as the means to do so has been available.

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OTW Guest Post

OTW Guest Post: Ann McClellan

Claudia Rebaza

From time to time, the OTW will be hosting guest posts on our OTW News accounts. These guests will be providing an outside perspective on the OTW or aspects of fandom where our projects may have a presence. The posts express each author’s personal views and do not necessarily reflect the views of the OTW or constitute OTW policy. We welcome suggestions from fans for future guest posts, which can be left as a comment here or by contacting us directly.

Ann McClellan is Professor and Chair of English at Plymouth State University where she teaches classes on 19th and 20th century British Literature, film/adaptation studies, and digital literature. Her scholarship interests include Sherlock Holmes and/in popular culture and British women’s campus fiction. Today, Ann talks about her article on Sherlock Holmes fandom in the latest issue of Transformative Works and Cultures.

How did you first become aware of fandom and fanworks?

In a sense, I always ‘knew’ about fandom through my own research and teaching interests in adaptation studies, but no one ever called such texts “fan texts” when I was in school. I’ve long been interested in how ‘authorized’ writers and filmmakers have colonized and transformed canonical texts like The Scarlet Letter, Jane Austen’s novels, and Shakespeare’s plays, but it wasn’t until a friend introduced me to Sherlock when it premiered on PBS in 2010 that I really learned about fan culture and fandom more specifically.

Of course, events like ComicCon had already entered the contemporary zeitgeist by 2010 when Sherlock reached the US, so I was aware of such gatherings, but I had no idea how pervasive and diverse they were until my own explorations in online Sherlock fandom beginning in 2011. I can’t remember the precise reason or prompt, but I began researching Sherlock online and discovered LiveJournal and fan fiction for the first time—in my forties! I instantly became addicted to the serial nature of fan fiction and writers’ ability to immerse me into the show’s world through various ‘fix it’ fics, AU fantasies, slash, and other genres. Soon, this new world of fan fiction became my personal and professional obsession and my previous plan to write a book on Sherlock Holmes in popular culture quickly morphed into a book on Sherlock fan fiction and world building.

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