#quarrles

In obsession_inc's blog post, "Affirmational fandom vs. Transformational fandom," the audience is given two types of fan practices to compare. The first, affirmational fandom, is the practice of intimately studying and absorbing the source material without changing it or adding new elements into the universe that aren't already supported by the original text. To contrast that, transformational fandom is the practice of taking a source material and remixing it to either "fix a disappointing issue(...)  in the source material, or using the source material to illustrate a point, or just to have a whale of a good time" (obsession_inc 7). The author points out that traditionally, affirmational fandom is comprised of male fans and transformational fandom contains more female fans. However, I believe that focusing on these gendered differences too closely only hinders our ability to accurately study fan practices.

When we look at the material side of fan practices, or mimetic fandom as Matt Hills puts it, we can see ways that this binary can be both harmful and plainly incorrect. When considering the idea of mimetic fandom, or "the creation of highly screen-accurate prop replicas" (Hills 1.2), we see how one can look at it as a purely affirmational practice. However, to do so would be unfair to a large portion of the mimetic community. For example, if we study mimetic fandom as a male dominated practice, we would be ignoring the hugely popular community of female cosplayers, a community that is not only rapidly growing in numbers, but also distinct enough to be studied on its own.

Mimetic practices are also unique in their ability to blur the lines of affirmational and transformational fandom, erasing the need for a binary where one is unnecessary. When studying products of mimetic fandom, we see how a fan designing a screen-accurate costume might have to take certain liberties in the design where the source material may not have an answer, thereby turning an affirmational work into a transformational one. On the other side, when creating a transformational work, generally an extensive knowledge of the source material is needed to help the new work fit into the universe of the original, further blurring the line of these two forms of fandom practices. When we study fandoms in a binary, we risk either ignoring large communities of fans or misrepresenting the work that goes into both affirmational and transformational practices.

Works cited:

obsession_inc. “Affirmational Fandom vs. Transformational Fandom”. Dreamwidth. Dreamwidth Studios, 1 June 2009. Web.

In Tisha Turk and Joshua Johnson’s “Toward an ecology of vidding,” the authors tell us about the evolution of fan vids and how we study them, stating that the old ways of looking at fan creations as merely readings of media and not their own creations are outdated. They claim that we need to use "An ecological model of composition" to study "both the individual and social aspects of authorship and, perhaps more importantly, to the interactions between them" (5.1). To look at how a piece of fan media can evolve through a fan culture, I will use sambc's video, "Giant Bomb Animated (Kinda) - In the Mouth of Madden-ness" as an example.

This video is an example of a growing type of media that I haven't really found a name for. The basic concept is that fans will take excerpts from their favorite podcasts and upload the clips to websites such as Youtube with their own video overlaying the audio. This can range from things such as a single image of the podcast logo to images of whoever is currently talking to full on animation of the situation being discussed in the audio clip. This video is a clip from the gaming podcast The Giant Bombcast, where the members are discussing ways game companies discuss their products at press conferences. This piece characterizes the collaborative nature of fan vidding through a number of ways. The Giant Bomb fan community (or "duders") has had a history of sharing their favorite moments from the podcast just as long as the podcast has been running. What started out as simple still images has evolved into full on animations even more intricate than the example above, ranging from machinima to hand drawn 2D animations as the community has grown. And over time, these types of videos have grown in a way to the point that they are no longer just rehosting of the original content. They have changed to be standalone works that add to the source material, supplying their own jokes through re-edits and in-jokes in the community.

The video above adds audio effects such as an explosion and microphone distortion over the original podcast to add to the humor of the bit. We also see jokes made by the creator, such as the "I'm not making a visual for this," that transform the work into its own property that just uses a popular source material as a backbone. These fan vids have always been collaborative in nature as well. sambc is a recent contributor to the community of Youtubers that re-edit podcast clips, and we can see how he uses past techniques such as still image manipulation and showing a caricature of the current speaker on the screen. Even the images of the people on the podcast are pieces of fan art. Made in 2012 by SupernormalStep, these drawings of the Giant Bomb crew in the Persona 4 artstyle have been used by many fans in podcast animations. Works Cited Turk, Tisha and Joshua Johnson. 2012. “Toward an Ecology of Vidding.”Transformative Works and Cultures, no. 9. Web. 2 Oct 2016. 

samcb. “ Giant Bomb Animated (Kinda) - In the Mouth of Madden-ness.” Online video clip. Youtube. Youtube, 15 July 2016. Web. 2 Oct 2016.

Other Links http://www.giantbomb.com/profile/supernormalstep/blog/persona-4-the-golden-duder-project-gb-crew-as-p4-c/96302/

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Cv3vItb5W3M

In Joli Jensen's essay “Fandom as Pathology: The Consequences of Characterization,” she covers the ways society represents fans, or more specifically the more extreme sides of fans. According to Jensen, hardcore fans are shown in one of two ways: as "an obsessed loner, suffering from a disease of social isolation," or as "a frenzied crowd member, suffering from a disease of contagion" (Jensen 13). We see both of these caricatures in media a number of ways, including the 2007 film Blades of Glory.

Blades of Glory is a film set in a society where figure skaters are lauded after in the same way football players or rock stars are and the film features a character named Hector, who fits the description of the crazed stalker described by Jensen to a T. He is seen in the film following Jon Heder's character, Jimmy, around to every competition and collecting anything he can relating to Jimmy. We see Hector go through a range of emotions when around Jimmy, from hysteric excitement to uncontrollable weeping. This is directly related to Jensen's observations on the differences between fans and aficionados. Jensen claims that to be a fan, there must be a certain amount of emotional connection with the subject of affection, as apposed to having the reserved and rational eye of an aficionado (Jensen 20). Jensen goes on to say that traditionally, "Unemotional, detached, 'cool' behavior is seen as more worthy and admirable than emotional, passionate, 'hot' behavior." Because of this, people are more likely to hide, or at least downplay, their interests to avoid coming off like a fan who has lost all ties with the real world.