Posts in Fannish Endings
This Week in Fandom, Volume 77
Welcome to This Week in Fandom, the OTW’s roundup of things which are happening! Before we start, The Shape of Water just won four categories at the Academy Awards, including the award for Best Picture—the first sci-fi/fantasy film to do so since 2004. Tell us your reaction in the comments! The Anchorage Museum in Alaska is currently running a fandom-themed exhibit. “The Art of Fandom,” according to a press release by the museum, “explores the things people like in our mass and global culture through collectables, contemporary art and design, fan art, and fandom sub-culture.” The release goes on to list examples of the wide… Read more
This Week in Fandom, Volume 61
Welcome to This Week in Fandom, the OTW’s roundup of things which are happening! Before we start, have you seen the Sesame Street version of Despacito, “El Patito” (Rubber Duckie)? The New Yorker magazine published an article on fanfiction this week titled The Promise and Potential of Fan Fiction. A significant portion of the article is based on OTW staffer Francesca Coppa’s book The Fanfiction Reader, and it is also well researched in other elements of its discussion. It’s a thoughtful and positive portrayal of fanfiction in a much more popular mainstream publication than those that normally discuss fanworks.
This Week in Fandom, Volume 53
Welcome to This Week in Fandom, the OTW’s roundup of things which are happening! Before we start, did you know that The Babadook has no Fanlore page? If only someone would tell its story. Sad news for vid lovers this week: VividCon is shutting down. According to a post on the convention’s Dreamwidth community, 2018 will be its final year. Organizers say there were multiple factors that contributed to the decision. “We could make significant structural changes to VividCon, reduce programming, make it smaller – but odds are we would run into the same problems again before long, and in any case, something that different… Read more
OTW Fannews: Life and Times
Latino USA aired a segment on diversity in geekdom which looked at video games, comic books, and cosplay. A Latino fan was interviewed about the introduction of more diverse comic book heroes, saying “It’s intense to see all these races now, it’s not just a white man’s sport anymore.” The interviewer noted that the con attendance was very diverse. “Not only are Latinos and other people of color everywhere but LGBTQ couples walk hand in hand, all ages are represented, and a few people with disabilities are pulling off some impressive costumes.” (No transcript available)
OTW Fannews: Creating & Remembering Fans
Slate wrote about the University of Iowa’s Hevelin Collection of fanzines, quoting the OTW’s Karen Hellekson who wrote “fanzines were typically self-published pamphlets, made from ‘stapled-together pieces of ordinary-sized letter paper, sometimes folded in half.’ Fans would exchange these documents through the mail, often after discovering one another through the letters pages of magazines such as Amazing Stories…According to Hellekson, in those pre-photocopying days authors of zines would reproduce their work via carbon paper, mimeograph, or other similarly primitive means.”