Fanlore

Today, the J-Rock fandom takes center-stage! Since its rise to prominence near the turn of the century, fans have drawn from the theatrics and stage personas of Japanese rock bands to establish an RPF community, complete with ships, role-plays, and fanworks.

The fandom had its start primarily through mailing lists and blogging sites. It grew in later decades thanks to online music streaming and increased interest in J-Rock outside of Japan. Buying and selling second-hand merch, such as CDs and cheki, is a common fan activity. In addition, Japanese-speaking fans often recap live performances and translate lyrics or interviews.

Do you know any fun trivia about the J-Rock fandom? Come share it with us on Fanlore!

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For Terminology Thursday, we're covering Folksonomies, a term for classification systems created not by site owners, but by the users themselves. Instead of a formal, top-down taxonomy, folksonomies grow from people tagging content in ways that make sense to them, making it easier for themselves and others to find things later.

The portmanteau was coined in 2004 by Thomas Vander Wal as a blend of folk and taxonomy. You may also see it referred to as social tagging, social indexing, or collaborative tagging.

As online communities grew, it evolved into a shared system shaped by many users adding, reusing, and remixing tags, appearing across various platforms, from social bookmarking sites to image-sharing communities like Flickr. In fandom spaces, user-driven tagging plays a significant role on platforms such as AO3, Tumblr, and FanFiction.net, where collective tagging helps fans organise, discover, and navigate content.

Discussions around Folksonomy often focus on its strengths and limitations, including its flexibility and community-driven nuances, as well as the potential for inconsistency or overwhelming tag variation. Still, for many fans, this organic, communal system is part of what makes online fandom so vibrant and searchable.

What are your experiences with user-created tagging systems? Join the discussion on Fanlore!

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This week’s Featured Article is all about the Fairy Tale AU—fanworks that take characters and put them in situations and/or settings from fairy tales! Since fairy tales are often universal and well-known, these AUs are popular across fandoms.

Tropes and elements often seen in fairy tale AUs include magic, curses, True Love’s Kiss, and Fairy Godmothers. Princes and princesses, and a Happily Ever After ending, are also common. AUs can incorporate the original fairy tale in a variety of ways, from merely invoking the atmosphere, to using a few elements or tropes, to a full retelling. Some AUs will take the original fairy tale and explore darker themes and topics than typically expected of a fairy tale AU. These are not full trope subversions, because they usually still end happily, but they definitely take a darker perspective on the tale.

Do you enjoy fairy tale AUs? Let us know in the comments!

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Fanlore is finding a new way to thank our editors: Milestone badges!

Fanlore is nothing without our hard-working volunteer editors, who create pages, categorize files, update fandom information, and more. Now when editors reach certain editing milestones, like making 10 edits, 100 edits, etc., they will be able to claim triumphant new badges.

Are you a Fanlore editor? To find out how to check your editing statistics, and how to claim your badges, please visit our help page.

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Our Featured Article this week is Sussex Retirement!

A popular trope in Sherlock Holmes fandom, Sussex Retirement imagines what happens after the great detective leaves Baker Street behind. Inspired by canon references to Holmes retiring to the Sussex countryside, fans have spent decades reimagining his post-detective life, often with Dr. John Watson by his side. Whether Watson retires with Holmes, joins him later, or reunites with him for one last case, Sussex Retirement stories blend domesticity, nostalgia, romance, and mystery.

The trope appears across countless adaptations, from the original stories to Sherlock Holmes (2009), BBC Sherlock, and more. For many fans, Sussex Retirement represents the ultimate happy ending: a chance for Holmes and Watson to find peace together after years of adventures. The setting has inspired everything from emotional reunions to late-life love stories, making it one of the most enduring concepts in Holmes fandom history.

Want to learn more? Check out its Fanlore page!

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This week, we’re bringing you a piece of ancient fandom lore with our featured article on The K/S Netfan-Printzine Fan Wars - the clashes between the Kirk/Spock (K/S) print zine community and the online Star Trek fandom.

Print zine fans were authors, readers, and artists who, since Star Trek: TOS was on the air, forged the path in fan fiction writing. Before the internet, letterzines were the only means for fans to have regular and organized discussions with other fans. The K/S fandom, which sprang from the wider print zine community, was highly protective of their works and was adamant on staying out of visible spaces for fear of legal actions from Paramount.

The introduction of Usenet in 1979 ushered in a new generation of Kirk/Spock fans, many of whom were either oblivious to the print zine fandom, neutral towards its existence, or openly dismissive and hostile to these previous fans. The online Star Trek space was also not exclusively for Kirk/Spock fans but included other pairings from Star Trek: TOS, Star Trek: Voyager, and Star Trek: Deep Space Nine. For online Trek fans, alt.startrek.creative and alt.startrek.creative.erotica.moderated were platforms where they could post fanfics without having to conform to traditions or worry about expectations from others.

While the Usernet fan groups grew into lively spaces, Kirk/Spock print zine fans began to feel at a disadvantage in terms of attracting new fans and that their favourite pairing was diluted in this online space. Another point of contention between the two communities was “elitism’’, as zine fans argue that not everyone has access to a computer and the internet, while online fans point out that not everyone wants to pay a yearly fee for letterzines.

The resulting culture clash included turf wars, blacklisting, and blanket statements by fans on both sides who fanned fires fueled by tribal alliances and relationships.

Curious how this epic fandom war went down? Head over to Fanlore!

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Knights of the Round Table doomed to betray each other. This week's Ship Sunday is Gawaine/Lancelot from Arthuriana!

Gawaine and Lancelot are both prominent figures in Arthurian Legend. They meet as rivals, but soon become brothers-in-arms and great friends. Although, depending which stories one follows, they are doomed to betray each other, even leading to their deaths. Many fans are drawn to the pair because of the tragedy of brothers-in-arms growing to hate one another, where others rewrite their story in fanworks, giving them a happier ending.

Are you a fan of this ship? Help us expand their Fanlore page by adding your favorite tropes and fanworks!

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Have you ever seen a piece of fanart that references, reworks, or imitates a well-known work of art? This is known as Fanart Pastiche, and is common across all fandoms and all art styles.

Popular paintings that inspire fanart include Gustav Klimt's The Kiss, Alexandre Cabanel's Fallen Angel, and Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec's In Bed the Kiss. Commercial art, such as film posters and album covers, can also inspire fanart, as well as other media such as games. Since a lot of historical art is in the public domain, we’re including fanart pastiche in our public domain month here at Fanlore!

Many fanartists create pieces based on a painting, sculpture, or other medium not only to showcase their love for a character or story, but also to hone their technical skills and to practice different art styles. And seeing a familiar, iconic work of art with your favorite characters in it is always a treat!

Do you have a favorite fanart pastiche work? Tell us about it below, and visit Fanlore to view examples from across fandoms!

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Today's Featured Article is Illya Kuryakin from the 1960s television series The Man from U.N.C.L.E.

Illya started out as a minor recurring role on the show, but quickly became a fan favorite and was upgraded to a series regular. Illya was the central focus of a large amount of fanworks, where fans often liked to make him cry, perhaps in response to his more controlled and mysterious nature on the show. Although, many other fans complained that he was made to cry too much and that fan creators were making him "whimpy".

Fans also like to explore Illya's past. Since very little about Illya's past is known in canon, except that he is originally from the Soviet Union and attended the fictional University of Georgia, fans like to explore what his childhood and youth were like, and he is often headcanoned as being from Ukraine.

Were you a fan of Illya growing up? Come check out his Fanlore page!

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What if we told you Sherlock Holmes’s most famous companion… wasn’t who you thought?

For Meta Monday, we’re spotlighting “Watson was a Woman?”, a delightfully tongue-in-cheek 1941 essay by Rex Stout that asks a bold question about the Dr John Watson we think we know.

He argues Watson must be a woman, based on the way Watson speaks to Sherlock.

From fainting at Holmes’s return, to nursing him through illness, to trying to get him off cocaine, Stout reads Watson’s narration as less “loyal friend” and more “long-suffering wife.”

The result is a fascinating early example of fannish meta: playful, provocative, and deeply engaged with character dynamics long before modern fandom discourse took shape.

Did Stout mean it seriously? Not quite. But like much of fandom, the fun lies in the interpretation – and in asking “what if?”

Curious? Dive into the essay on Fanlore!

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Today's Ship Sunday is Moriarty/Moran from Sherlock Holmes fandom.

James Moriarty is Holmes' nemesis, and Sebastian Moran is his loyal friend and minion. There is very little canon information about their relationship, except that they are "bosom friends", and that Moran tries to avenge Moriarty's death. Some adaptations give us a little more to work with, but it's mostly the fans who have expanded and explored their relationship. Often referred to as the dark mirrors of Holmes/Watson, some fanworks will be dark in nature, with the pair committing unspeakable crimes together, where other fanworks will focus on Moran's devotion and loyalty to Moriarty, and their friendship turning romantic.

Curious? Go over to their Fanlore page to learn more!

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Down the rabbit hole we go! For Public Domain Fandoms, we’re spotlighting Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland and its ever-evolving fandom!

First published in 1865 by Lewis Carroll, Alice in Wonderland has inspired over a century of fanworks, meta, and reinterpretation. Various adaptations have helped fuel this growth; stage and screen adaptations, including the more recent Tim Burton film, which sparked a wave of new fans and fiction (hello, Tarrant/Alice).

Fans have long debated what Wonderland stands for and whether it’s simple “playful nonsense” or a deeper allegory altogether. As a public-domain work with no need to file off the serial numbers, Alice in Wonderland thrives on transformation, from crossovers and dark retellings to madly creative AUs.

How did you find Wonderland? Add your knowledge and favourite fanworks to the Fanlore page!

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