April Showers is here!

Banner by Diane with the outlines of a man and woman speaking th word bubbles, one of which has the OTW logo and the other which says 'OTW Announcement'

Fanlore editing party!

Keen to add your fannish memories to Fanlore but not sure where to start? Need your hand held as you make your first wiki edits? Or keen to share your skillz as an experienced Fanlore editor? Join Fanlore staff in the Fanlore chatroom for an editing party! You’ll be able to get help making your first forays into editing Fanlore, toss around ideas for new pages, and ask questions. Everyone is welcome!

Join them on Saturday, 19 April, from 20:00 to 22:30 UTC. (What’s the start time in my timezone?)

Here at the OTW, preserving fannish history is a central part of our mission! We’re proud to be able to offer fans a place to archive their works on the Archive of Our Own, and tell their own fannish histories on Fanlore. Both of these sites passed major milestones in February and represent works and stories about many thousands of fandoms.

However, we know that there are a lot more histories and fanworks out in the world which haven’t found their way to the AO3 or Fanlore. So this month, we invite you to bring us fannish April showers by digging out those old zines, memories of past cons, archived personal webpages, tales of shipwars and fannish events, works on slowly-decaying archives, new works you’ve been putting off creating, and more! Help us celebrate fandom’s history and diversity by uploading your old (and new) works to the AO3 and by telling your tales on Fanlore. When uploading to the AO3, you can tag your uploaded works April Showers 2014

Alternatively, celebrate your favorite fanworks on the Archive by sharing your recs with us. To do so, simply bookmark the fanwork in question and add it to our April Showers Recs collection.

Screen capture of the bookmark screen showing the Notes box, the Collections field (just type in April Showers Recs 2014, or use the autocomplete) and the Rec ticky box

To do this, either create a new bookmark of the work or edit an existing bookmark you’d like to highlight for this occasion. In the Bookmarking screen, scroll to the bottom, check the “Rec” box and add the name “April Showers Recs 2014” in the collection field. When sharing your recs, we encourage you to leave some comments about it in the Notes section, to help guide other fans.

For our part, we’ll be highlighting a different fandom for each day of the month through our social media sites:

Check them for the hashtag #aprilshowers! We hope to jog your memories about fannish loves of the past and highlight some currently active fandom activity. However, don’t feel you have to stick to the fandoms we highlight!

2014-03-31 admin
Archive of Our Own, Event, Fanlore ,
  1. Lana Baker commented: I've tried adding some of my bookmarked works to this collection, but it doesn't show in the dropdown list. :(
    • Claudia Rebaza commented: Yay for recs! I'm not too sure which dropdown list you mean, but if you drop a note to Support, they can make sure nothing's wrong on our end and help you get that done. I could forward this message to Support but it will be more helpful to them to get it from you directly so that they can help you work with your account there.
      • Lana Baker commented: Looks like they fixed it. It was "closed" before, and now it's "open."
        • Claudia Rebaza commented: Whoops! Thanks for having alerted us to that. Also good to know that we're not going to have to wait to get that collection started ;)
  2. Tony :) commented: Currently studying fandom from a Christian perspective and had an epiphany. Being in evangelical circles on facebook I've seen plenty of discussion about the Noah movie and it's biblical accuracy. (Rock monsters, really?) Then it hit me....it's basically biblical fan fiction. Might make an interesting future article for Transformative Works and Cultures. If no one else writes it, I'll volunteer :)
    • Claudia Rebaza commented: I'm forwarding your message to our Journal Committee, but here's the link for submitting to them, as well. They're looking for contributions to their Symposium section!
    • Kristina Busse commented: Dear Tony, This sounds like a great topic. Of course there exists a lot of biblical fanfic already: you can start with Paradise Lost and end with The Red Tent; or you can look at the great biblical adaptations from Ben Hur and The Ten Commandments to The Passions of the Christ; or you can look at more transformative works like Jesus Christ Superstar or The Last Temptation of Christ or even The Book of Daniel and The Book of Ruth. And that's not looking at fan art, which is basically the entirety of ME art and much since :) But I like the idea of going back around and looking at issues of canonicity. After all, the concept of CANON came to us via Sherlockians from, afaik, Higher Criticism. So it CAME from Bible exegesis, and it may be interesting to look at the way this critical reading plays out versus Evangelical literalism. But I'm not the religious scholar :) That'd be your thing... If you just want to write it and submit it, do so via the Web site. If you want to talk about it, just send a note to editor@. It'll get to me, and I'll get back to you. Best, Kristina
      • Tony :) commented: It's interesting that you noted The Ten Commandments, Ben Hur, and Paradise Lost because those immediately came to mind for me as well (the latter thanks to TV tropes ;). I'd be taking the evangelical literal viewpoint if I wrote it, but it's neat to see the similarities between canon vs. fanon and interpretive issues relating to Scripture. That stuff fascinated me in my theology and Greek classes :)