#fanlore featured article

This week’s Featured Article is Batman Oral Sex Ban!

An overnight fandom phenomenon, Batman Oral Sex Ban emerged on June 14, 2021, after Harley Quinn co-creators Justin Halpern and Patrick Schumacker revealed in an interview that DC executives prohibited a scene of Batman performing oral sex on Catwoman, explaining that “heroes don’t do that.”

The Fandom’s response was swift, resulting in rapid discourse across Twitter, Tumblr, TikTok, and Reddit, sparking conversations about censorship, sexual politics, gendered pleasure, and double standards. Writers and fans alike reclaimed the moment through fics, memes, and commentary, turning “Heroes don’t do that” into a now-famous catchphrase. On AO3, the canonical tag Bruce Wayne Gives Oral Sex quickly grew, with the vast majority of works published after the news broke, alongside ironic counter-tags like Bruce Wayne Doesn’t Give Oral Sex.

The moment even spilled beyond fandom spaces, with creators, celebrities, and filmmakers (including Zack Snyder) weighing in, and at least one independently published erotic work was inspired directly by the incident.

Curious how one offhand quote turned into a full-blown fandom event? Head over to Fanlore to read all about it!

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This week's Featured Article is Crack Van!

Active from 2003 to 2014, Crack Van was a multifandom fanfiction and vid rec community on LiveJournal that became, for a generation of fans, the first stop when exploring a new fandom. At its peak, it was one of the most organised and wide-ranging rec communities the internet had ever seen, with nearly 25,000 recs over ten years.

The community worked by recruiting volunteers from individual fandoms to "drive the van" for a month at a time, posting regular recommendations and writing fandom primers: overviews designed to help total newcomers understand the source material, the characters, the ships, and where to find the good stuff.

Crack Van closed permanently in January 2014, signalling a broader shift in fandom culture, as Tumblr, AO3, and Twitter had changed how fans discovered fanworks and connected with each other, making the curated, collaborative structure of Crack Van feel like a different era entirely. Many fans mourned it as the end of something irreplaceable.

Crack Van also inspired a wave of fandom-specific rec communities in its image, like Crack Impala for Supernatural.

Curious about the community that helped hundreds of thousands of fans find their footing in new fandoms? Head over to Fanlore to learn more!

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This week’s Featured Article is all about the Cease and Desist by Fox Against Fan Sites. In the mid-1990s, the rise of the internet meant a surge in online fan websites. 20th Century Fox launched an aggressive legal offensive against those fan websites, targeting the use of official images, sounds, and logos from shows like The Simpsons, The X-Files, Millennium, and Buffy the Vampire Slayer.

Fox’s campaign began in October 1995, when their legal team sent Simpsons fan Jeanette Foshee a cease and desist letter, demanding she remove hundreds of Simpsons character icons she had created and shared freely with other fans for personal use. That kicked off a string of escalating cease and desist letters, which resulted in the takedown of a Millennium fan site a year later. Not all sites were forced down by Fox, and fanfiction and fan art were not targets; however, some fans took down or abandoned their websites and fanworks out of fear of being targeted. By 1997, the verb “Foxed” had become the catchall term for being threatened with legal action for copyright infringement.

The majority of fans did not support Fox’s aggressive tactics, feeling betrayed and villianized, and when Lucasfilm began targeting Star Wars fan sites, fans began organizing in protest, creating pro-fandom banners and spearheading campaigns to protect fan websites, some of which caught mainstream media attention.

Want to further explore this pivotal moment in fandom history? Dive into the controversy on Fanlore!

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This week’s Featured Article is about Dr. Leonard "Bones" McCoy. He was portrayed by DeForest Kelley in Star Trek TOS and subsequent movies, where he served as ship's doctor aboard the starship Enterprise.

He provided the emotional voice of the show, concerned with morality and humanity, as a foil to Spock's cold logic. The two operated as opposing angels on the shoulders of Captain James T. Kirk; only with their input could he make a proper decision. The relationship among them is often referred to by fans as The Big Three and "The Triad.”

Learn more about the fandom for this iconic character on Fanlore!

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This week's Featured Article is Doctor Whooves!

Doctor Whooves began as a nameless background pony in My Little Pony: Friendship is Magic. They soon became a fandom breakout character, because fans headcanoned that this was a pony version of The Doctor from Doctor Who, based on their hourglass cutie mark and their mane that was similar to The Tenth Doctor's hairstyle. The show in later seasons seemed to lean into this fanon, showing Doctor Whooves in not only Ten's tie, but Eleven's bow-tie, and Four's iconic scarf.

Fans love to create fanworks with Doctor Whooves, especially fanart that imagines what the different regenerations of Doctor Whooves would look like. Sometimes that could be changing just their mane and accessories, but other times also changing their coat's color and texture, and sometimes giving them wings or a unicorn horn. Fans also created fic, handmade plushies, animations, and episodic audio dramas that follow Doctor Whooves on their adventures through time and space!

Curious? Come check out their Fanlore page!

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Today’s Featured Article is Why I Can’t Trust You With The Term “Purity Culture”, which covers an essay by osteophage posted in 2019. The essay outlines the origin of “purity culture” as a term, and critiques its modern usage in fandom spaces, especially on Tumblr.

“Purity culture” was coined to describe a cultural movement led by conservative Christians in the United States. This movement encouraged young people to strive for “sexual purity” by following a set of practices, such as abstaining from sex until marriage. Although it rose to prominence in the 1990s and 2000s, some Christian circles still promote it today.

Osteophage argues that in Tumblr fandom spaces, the term has been divorced from meaning, with broad definitions that contradict what it stood for in the first place. Osteophage writes that the comparison of “fandom ship wars over erotic fanfic to purity culture doesn’t make sense because purity culture would condemn the whole lot of you for writing erotica in the first place.” Among the alternative descriptors to “purity culture” that osteophage lists, “ship wars” is one of them. Others include absolutism, punitive morality, and ignorance. The essay cites Fanlore’s Purity Culture in Fandom article to demonstrate how the “repurposing of the term” has taken root.

Responses to the essay were mixed. Some commenters were unfamiliar with the term’s fandom usage, while others were unfamiliar with its original definition. Some agreed with the essay’s message, while others—especially on AO3—argued the fandom definitions of “purity culture” were appropriate.

Would you like to learn more about this piece of meta? Come explore its Fanlore page!

This week’s featured article is about Bucky Barnes/Steve Rogers, one of Marvel fandom’s most beloved ships. From their shared Brooklyn-based childhood to their tragic separation and hard-won reunions, Steve and Bucky’s bond has fueled years of intense emotional investment across the MCU.

Since Captain America: The First Avenger (2011), Stucky has inspired a massive archive of fanfiction, fanart, edits, and meta exploring themes of loyalty, trauma, memory, and “I’ll follow you anywhere” devotion. Fans dissect every glance and line of dialogue, debate canon versus subtext, and reimagine their story through AUs, fix-its, and post-Endgame healing narratives.

Want to learn more about how Stucky became such a cornerstone of Marvel fandom history? Check out its Fanlore page!

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Today’s Featured Article is Rise of the Brave Tangled Dragons! This fandom crosses over the animated movies Rise of the Guardians, Brave, Tangled, and How to Train Your Dragon.

After its start in late 2012, the fandom may have grown in popularity due to the films’ parallels. The main crossover cast is often called “The Big Four”, while characters from other animated movies—such as Hotel Transylvania, The Lorax, and Frozen—occasionally join them.

The Big Four have no canonical interactions as a group. Still, that hasn’t hindered the manips and other fanworks that bring them together. They are frequently depicted as Guardians of Childhood and seasonal spirits, taking from Jack Frost’s canonical role as a winter spirit and Guardian of Fun in Rise of the Guardians. Prevalent ships include Jack Frost/Rapunzel, Merida/Hiccup, and more recently, Hiccup/Jack Frost. Although the fandom peaked in popularity around the mid-2010s, it continues to host new activity and fanworks.

Have something to say about Rise of the Brave Tangled Dragons? Come share it with us on Fanlore!

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