If you want to spend more time in your favorite story-worlds, all you need to do is go online and search for some fanfiction. Or, if you prefer watching rather than reading, some fanvids or fanart. For those of you who have been living under a rock for the last few years, fanfiction, fanvids, and fanart are stories, videos, and images created by fans of certain works using elements of those works. So, for example, a fan of Lord of the Rings writing a version of the trilogy in which Frodo is female or a fan of Twilight writing a story about Bella and Edward in a BDSM relationship (and if you’re E.L. James, making millions by changing the characters’ names and publishing the story as an original trilogy). In the case of fanvids, there are many different types of videos including those that tell alternate stories, those that focus on a particular [relation]ship, those that compile favorite clips, and more. Finally, in fanart, fans can create new visual scenes between characters, change characters’ identity markers (like race, age, gender), or recreate iconic images from the source material using their own artistic skills and media. If you’re not familiar with basic fandom terminology, check out this link before continuing.
As part of my blog, I’d like to have the occasional “fandom spotlight” post. In these posts, I can recommend some of my favorite fanfics (I’m not much of a fanvid or fanart person), talk about trends that are happening in my favorite fandoms, and potentially interview some of my favorite fan writers. Before I experiment with these spotlights, though, I thought it important to share with you the current fandoms that I spend most of my time in. I’ve been reading fanfic for more than 15 years, so I’ve been a part of many fandoms in the past. For this post, though, I’m going to focus on my current top five fandoms and the particular elements of them that I enjoy the most. I thought this short intro would help give readers a sense of whether or not they’ll be interested in my future fandom spotlights.
