Not gonna draw attention to the post because I suspect the person might blow a gasket, but it's always so funny to me when you see someone picking apart fanart, in this case, a popular fan Ot3 pairing, and they're like, "y'all have brainrot, this'll never be canon, you realize that?"

And maybe I'm just ancient, but since when has fandom ever been about validating canon? Canon is incidental to fandom output. It is, at best, a guideline. You can stick to it, or you can go so far off the beaten path that you fall off the edge of the world and wind up in a new one where the map has words like "here be dragons" stamped in the upper corner.

Fandom is about exploration beyond the canon. It can look like canon, talk like canon, and sometimes even emulate it so perfectly you'd swear you've found the author's secret account, but it doesn't have to.

Ultimately, however, it's about having fun. And if you can't understand that, I have no idea what you're doing here.

[image description: an image of Change My Mind meme. The caption has been edited to read: Literature studies and fandom culture are, at their core, the same thing. You can’t change my mind. end of description.]

Well shit, Henry Jenkins, out here in 1997 dropping truth bombs

Oh hey I need this for a research paper I’m writing, thank you!

i mean he had been out here since 1988 dropping such bombs:

Jenkins, Henry. “Star Trek Rerun, Reread, Rewritten: Fan Writing as Textual Poaching.” Critical Studies in Mass Communication 5, no. 2 (1988): 85–107. https://doi.org/10.1080/15295038809366691.  

there are even some earlier works in fan studies but that’s what i have ready to hand. 

Henry’s been amazing for a long time.

Archive your fandom stuff

As we sit on the cusp of changes to the Internet, after your other activities to support Internet freedom, archive your fandom stuff.

Save the electronic files of your favorite online fandom works. Consider print-outs of your favorite online material. And save paper ephemera from fandom events.

Why save? Because you put the effort into a fanwork. Because you may be surprised when a fandom stays alive for years, or gets revived, or when an academic asks to cite your work. Because it’s stupidly hard to find items on Tumblr. Because, lo, in ages past, many fandom archives have risen and fallen, taking favorite fics off the ‘Net. Because it made you happy, makes you remember. Because you never know.

What can you save?

Behind the cut…saving from Tumblr and AO3, delving into lost web sites, how to save computer files for the long term, and why I’m glad I saved physical fandom items from 10+ years ago.

Keep reading

So I am going to add onto this because there is, in fact, a professional archival interest in preserving fandom as well.  I’ve spoken with some people about this before, but here’s the bottom line: PROFESSIONAL ARCHIVISTS WANT TO PRESERVE YOUR STUFF!  HELP THEM DO THIS!

There are pre-existing fandom archives.  Where are they?

These are the big institutions doing collecting, but the archival profession and fandom need to start talking more.  Born digital material is always at risk, and at present, it is mostly Western fandoms being preserved!   Moreover, some facets like cosplay are currently overlooked, and that is something that needs better documentation!

If you’re interested in archiving of fannish material, especially in relation to the OTW and it’s Open Doors project, I highly recommend reading this transcript from 2016.

The transcript is from a chat between Peter Balestrieri (mentioned above, curator for the Science Fiction and Popular Culture Collections at U of I), Jeremy Brett (curator of the Science Fiction and Fantasy Research Collection at TAMU), and Nancy Down (head of the Browne Popular Culture Library at Bowling Green). It’s a really interesting read and they give a lot of information (and links!) about their archival work, how fans can get involved, pop culture and fannish history, and more.

To quote Jeremy Brett:

Archive all the things!

Not gonna draw attention to the post because I suspect the person might blow a gasket, but it's always so funny to me when you see someone picking apart fanart, in this case, a popular fan Ot3 pairing, and they're like, "y'all have brainrot, this'll never be canon, you realize that?"

And maybe I'm just ancient, but since when has fandom ever been about validating canon? Canon is incidental to fandom output. It is, at best, a guideline. You can stick to it, or you can go so far off the beaten path that you fall off the edge of the world and wind up in a new one where the map has words like "here be dragons" stamped in the upper corner.

Fandom is about exploration beyond the canon. It can look like canon, talk like canon, and sometimes even emulate it so perfectly you'd swear you've found the author's secret account, but it doesn't have to.

Ultimately, however, it's about having fun. And if you can't understand that, I have no idea what you're doing here.