A Beginner’s Guide To The Fannish Life
Here at The Path, we throw this word around a lot – fandom –but we haven’t talked about it extensively yet nor even explained what we mean by it. We hear a lot of buzzwords these days about “social TV” but let’s bear in mind that fandom as we know it has existed for decades. People were writing Star Trek fanfics pairing Kirk and Spock in the 1970s and would mail it to each other. Fans were “vidding” – a fannish term for mashing video content to music - before the dawn of the digital age.
So, you ask, what does Fandom mean? In a nutshell, you have a fandom when two people are talking to each other about an entertainment property. It refers to a community – fans talking to other fans. It means having a laugh with people who have the same interests as you, and participating in a creative, transformative culture that spans writing, photoshopping, manipulating video, and remixing loved properties. Most of all, it’s having a ball. We have our own vocabulary, our own platforms, our own cross-fandom competitions, and a tendency to overanalyze our favorite series. We like to get excited about things!
In the last two years or so, fandom has gotten a significant amount of mainstream attention – 50 Shades of Grey, for example,started as a Twilight “alternate universe” fanfic. The walls are coming down between TPTB – a fan term for The Powers That Be, the show creatives – and fans. MTV’s Teen Wolf, for example, held a slash-friendly fanfic contest – rewarding and legitimizing transformative fanworks.
For the uninitiated, fannish activities beyond discussion break down into three main components:
1) Fic – short for “fanfiction” – is self-explanatory. Sometimes people fic (yes, it’s used as a verb) to explore underused characters or situations, but most often fic is written to “fix” a part of the show that you don’t agree with. There are fic competitions, contests, community prompts and groups of beta readers to proofread your work. It’s a very social way of writing – fic is often released in installments, with comments and two-way feedback if it’s popular. There are also communities devoted to “rec’ing,” or fic recommendations. You’d be surprised how many famous authors were ficcers – like these ten mentioned in a recent Daily Dot article. A handful of successful TV writers also got their start in fic, like Doris Egan.
2) Fanart & Fanmixes range from simple GIFs to complex photo manipulations (you can make your favorite characters become pirates, ya know? It’s like having your own minibar.)
                                        pic from the Swan Queen fandom (I ship it)Â
3) Vidding means editing video content to music to make your own mini-narrative. Some are great, some are god-awful. There are even fan conventions dedicated to vidding – like the popular VividCon.
Here's one of my favorite vids, chronicling the relationship between Cara and Kahlan on Legend of the Seeker. In three minutes, Brad managed to tell his own story within the world of the show.Â
                       Aja Romano of the Daily Dot has a handy “intro to fandom” post – How To Speak Fangirl From “Plot What Plot” to “Alternate Universe” fics, the article will demystify what we do (and make you laugh in the process.)
If you’re interested in fandom’s remix culture a good place to start is the Organization for Transformative Works.Â
 In my next post, I’ll speak in greater detail of my own adventures in livejournal-land and fannish activity – and being a fangirl working in television and digital media. Â