The Anatomy of The Fan

Hello! My name is Portia and welcome to your first crash course in fan culture, otherwise known as fangirling or fandom. This post is the starting point for my fangirling for beginners blog series and contains loads of basic definitions that you’ll need if you read the other posts. So sit back, relax and lets explore the world of the fandom together.

I once heard a poem about an extreme fan that said if you cut one in half like a tree, you will see the word ‘saddo’ all the way through, but I don’t think that’s true.

Yes I admit that that could be said for some extreme fans, but if you scratch under the surface of all of the screaming you will stumble upon an unending wealth of creativity, love, dedication and bravery.

So why do I feel do detached from it? I’ve been lurking round the internet for a long time now and I consider myself to be an out, loud and proud nerd, but I’ve never felt the need to draw numerous portraits of my favourie tv show character or write a 250,000 word story about a game I’ve just played, but there is a vast number of people that do.

This isn’t a new phenomenon either, the idea of ‘the fangirl’ has been around since the birth of rock and roll in the Fifties and then Beatlemania that swept the world in the 1960s (think about that when you’re giving the stink eye to directioners).

However, being part of a fandom is much bigger today than screaming wildly at and pining over your favourite singer, covering your bedroom walls with posters of them and listening to their album over and over again, much to the disdain of your parent’s eardrums and sanity. It now looks a lot more like this.

In this blog series I will explore how being part of a fandom has changed over time, what exactly it entails and why do people take part. But first of all, lets start with a definition.

“The community that surrounds a tv show/movie/book etc. Fanfiction writers, artists, poets, and cosplayers are all members of that fandom. Fandoms often consist of message boards, livejournal communities, and people.” – Urban Dictionary

If all of that makes no sense to you then you’ve come to the right place. If your child locks themselves away in their room and the only noises you hear from them are screams of “omg I can’t even!” then they’re probably on the fandom side of tumblr.

Tumblr is a micro-blogging website where the vast majority of fandoms now reside and debate over particular topics and events in their fandom, but they also share artwork and fictional stories (known as fanfiction) with like minded individuals. In fact, Tumblr is now so popular that there are now 217 million blogs on it. Of course not all of those are fandom blogs, but tumblr has become synonymous with fandom.

Internet fandoms sure have come a long way since the chat rooms of the late 90s, fans now use multiple platforms to connect with each other and even the subjects of the fandoms themselves. There is always the obvious dangers of meeting people on the internet, but this BBC news article suggests that it might actually make them better behaved. And through my extensive procrastination research on Tumblr, I’ve found most people to be genuine and a general sense of camaraderie.

Absolutely anything can be the subject of a fandom, as long as you like it and show you like it, then it’s fandom from Downton Abbey to Doctor Who. There’s even a kitchen fandom!

Okay, so you like the thing, you’ve set up your Tumblr account, what do you do now? Participate of course! Say you’re in the Harry Potter fandom, you can contribute to 700,000+ Harry Potter stories on fanfiction.net, draw something like this and then save up your money to attend Geekycon in the summer and meet up with fellow fans. And if you’re an even bigger fan you can put on a series of musicals based on the events of the books (bonus points if you can spot the young celebrity)!

All in all, being part of a fandom is being part of an emotional community that laughs together, cries together and is a fantastic outlet for people’s creative energies, but most of all it’s an escape. As Tumblr user ivyblossom puts it,

“I participate in Sherlock fandom because I really love this story and these characters, and I’m really enjoying playing in this universe, thinking about what’s going on under the surface, constructing arguments out of evidence, contradicting myself over and over as I read, and write, and think about things differently, and discussing the whole enterprise with other passionate fans. I love all that stuff.”

Which brings me back to my original point. If you cut a fan in half, would you see the word saddo inside? No. What you’d see is the inside of a prison cell you weirdo!

But in all seriousness, I think that the world of the internet fandom is something we can learn from and it needs to lose the stigma surrounding it. People are not afraid to show their true passions in life and they can form real bonds with people thousands of miles away that somebody only 15 years ago could not even dream of.

Thanks for reading and see you next time! X

In my next blog post I shall explore the different types of fandoms and how they come to be? Are we told what to like or do things build momentum on their own.

Anything you’d like to ask or see me write about? Comment below or follow me on Twitter @Portia_Fahey to see my blogs as soon as they’re posted.