Every month in OTW Signal we’ll take a look at stories that connect to the OTW’s mission and projects, including legal, technology, academic, fannish history, and preservation issues that are important for fandom, fan culture or transformative works.
In the News
A recent article in India’s Hindustan Times discussed how people have been exploring their own pandemic circumstances using fanfiction:
In 2020, fan fiction was fuelled by people desperate to re-craft their reality too. And so, in the retelling of the Terry Pratchett-Neil Gaiman work Good Omens by @LilithReisender, a pandemic-era Pestilence is welcomed back by the other Horsemen of the Apocalypse; Meg March and John Brooke of the Louisa May Alcott classic Little Women struggle, in fan fiction by @MercuryGray, to juggle work and childcare.
The article went on to discuss unique aspects of fanfiction in terms of Indian culture:
“Mythology is rife with potential for fan fiction,” sais Keshava Guha, an editor at publishing house Juggernaut, and the author of Accidental Magic, a book set against the backdrop of Harry Potter fandom. “You could argue that India is the true and original home of ‘fanfic’. So much of our literature — whether prose, poetry, or drama — consists of adaptations, retellings, mash-ups and critiques of classic texts. The Mahabharata and Ramayana are the most obvious examples, but there are hundreds of others as well. This is a tradition that continues in every Indian language.”
Some such fanworks already exist at AO3 but we look forward to seeing many more, and discussion of those canons and fanworks on Fanlore!
OTW Tips
All the OTW’s current language teams are listed on the Translation Committee page. We currently have about 260 translators, working in 45 language teams. Visitors can find content in their own language at the OTW website by selecting it from the sidebar.
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