Welcome to This Week in Fandom, the OTW’s roundup of things which are happening!
First up this week: Zayn Malik and Chris Colfer are writing books. Zayn’s is a memoir, and Chris’ is a novel, but they make an interesting pair when taken together. Entertainment Weekly detailed the premise of Chris Colfer’s novel “Stranger Than Fanfiction,” in which a young actor named Cash Carter goes on a roadtrip with some fans, allowing them to learn his “deep secrets” along the way. Bustle reported on how Zayn’s memoir is being teased on Wattpad and how what’s been released so far explains how he “really feels about fanfiction.” Zayn’s attitude is generally positive: “I’m not gonna lie, it’s pretty unnerving reading things about yourself as a character from somebody else’s imagination — but it’s cool to see that so many fans engaged with the band on their own terms like that.” But if the life of Cash Carter is indeed stranger than fanfiction, then perhaps Zayn’s memoir will contain something especially shocking (because fanfiction can indeed get strange).
In less amusing news, Chelsea Cain, author of the comic book series Mockingbird, has quit Twitter amidst a storm of harassment. The Mary Sue wrote an article on the patterns of behaviour carried out by male comic book fans against female creators: “Attacking female creators has somehow become commonplace in fandom, to the point where some people (wrongly) view it as just part of the job.” Cain addressed the situation herself on her own website. She was careful to point out that she was not the victim of an organized campaign against her, but, rather, she was a victim of the status quo, and her declaration of that made her a target for worse attacks: “I did not leave Twitter because of […] any of the truly vile tactics you hear about. I left Twitter because of the ordinary daily abuse that I decided I didn’t want to live with anymore. The base level of casual crassness and sexism. […] I did not leave Twitter because I was trolled; I was trolled because I said I was going to leave Twitter.”
https://twitter.com/edbrisson/status/791363696198979584
Lastly, fans of the Chicago Cubs baseball team are all revved up about the team’s first World Series appearance in 71 years. Website Ourquadcities.com and Fox News reported on how being a Cubs fan is often passed down from one generation to the next (warning: autoplay video at link).
“It’s tradition in my family,” said the school custodian Chris Meuser, who also spoke about how wonderful it was to see kids who get the fandom from their parents. “My grandparents, my parents, all my siblings, and it’s run down through my children as well, and my grandchildren. It’s a tradition.”
Are you watching the World Series? Let us know in the comments or on social media who you’re cheering for!
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